Password on a outlook 2003 email

[colinmitton]

I have two senior members of staff who wish to send delicate information between themselves. They are on the same domain/exchange 2003 server and both have staff who look at there inbox. They used to send a word / excel document with a password to protect them but now they are using PDF's and images that have been scanned in, so adding a password to those documents is harder!

Can a password be added to an email? then not until the correct password has been entered can the email with attachments (or without!) be opened.

Thanks folks...

 

[chipk]

Look into using PGP for encrypting the e-mails.

You could also have them zip the sensitive files, and password protect the zip file. If you don't have a zip program that can password protect, 7-Zip is free and has this ability, though I'm not sure of the details of the password/encryption method, so I couldn't say how secure it actually is. But if you're only looking to prevent accidental compromise, that should work for you.

 

[tf1]

Outlook 2007 supports Information Rights Management, but you need a server with the IRM installed that is used to control who can do what to an email.

This is probably OTT for your needs though and chpk's solution of zipping the PDFs with password is probably the easiest soltion.

However, check your PDF software first as that may include password protection.

Regards: tf1

 

[colinmitton]

Thanks for that, while looking in to the PGP a friend of mine called me to suggest using the Certification Authority service on my 2003 AD server, I followed the instructions from these two articals:

1 - to set up the CA Service (from MS) :

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/se...n_the_Primary_Domain_Controller.mspx?mfr=true

2 - to set up the auto enrollment so I pick up the certificates automatically :

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Email_Security_with_Exchange_2003.html

I've just done this as its internal only for now I just need to get outlook to pick up the certificate!!!!! I have rebooted to pick up the latest GPO and ran gpupdate, still nothing through. Any ideas?

 

[chipk]

Did you do what the article instructs in Outlook client?

"Now you can configure your Outlook clients for email security. This can be done via the security setting properties from the Outlook options menu."

 

[colinmitton]

Yes, But I have spotted something! My local domain is company_name.local but our external internet domain name is companyname.co.uk

I setup the CA service to use the internal address not external. I could have something to do with that?

To let you know whats happening I select Encrypt message contents and attachments (only) from the security Properties window. Click OK, then Close the options window.
Send the email then I get a message basically saying outlook could not encrypt the message as I have no certificate for my externat address? I tried to manualy look and find one as I though it should be auto deployed but all the relevent places were empty on outlook.

I looked in IE7 and the one I set up was in the 'trusted root certification authorities' tab under certificates but not available in outlook. I looked at the advanced settings and emails were not 'ticked' so I did that and still no joy! Theres something I'm missing and its going to be obivious!

Thanks for your help so far....

 

[chipk]

I think you're right since your SMTP address is likely "user@companyname.co.uk" and not "user@company_name.local", though I'm not sure of the "guts" of CA.