"Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m yours"
February 11 2005 06:00:00 AM
Add/Read Comments [7]
It's Friday, time to showcase another feature of the upcoming Notes 7 release. Today's entry is about how Notes 7 makes it easy for you to see if an email message is signed, encrypted, or both.
Since the first release of Notes some 15 years ago, one of its greatest strengths has always been security. Long before many computer users were talking about things like certificates and encryption, Notes already had them built in. I'll save a longer discussion on signing and encrypting for future blog entries, but for today let me provide some simple definitions as taken from the Lotus Notes help file:
- Digital signatures are the computerized equivalent of a handwritten signature, but they are much harder to forge.
- When you encrypt Notes mail messages, Notes scrambles the information so that only specified recipients can read the messages.
With Notes 7, when you open an email message, a new feature on the status bar (bottom of the screen) shows you if the email message was signed, encrypted, or both.
Below you can see the "pen icon" informing you that the message is signed
Below you can see the "lock icon" informing you that the message is encrypted.
Below, you see both icons, informing you that the message is both signed and encrypted.
If you click on the icon, Notes provides you details about the message's security, such as:
"Signed by David Bell/Seattle/IBM on 02/23/2005 12:17:18 AM, according to /IBM"
