Certificates are used to encrypt, decrypt, digitally sign, and verify messages both internally in your GroupWise system and over the Internet. The Certificates option enables you to set and manage certificates (yours and recipients) for use in GroupWise. Your public certificate is used to sign messages and to send to others to allow them to verify your signature on the message. Certificates have two elements: a public key and a private key. From the perspective of encrypting and sending a message, once you have imported another user's public certificate, you can encrypt and send messages to that user, using the public key element from the certificate. When the other person receives the encrypted message, that user will use the private key element in his or her certificate to decrypt the message. From the perspective of receiving an encrypted message, you must have already sent your certificate to the sender. That person will use his or her public key element of your certificate to encrypt the message, and you will use the private key element of your certificate to decrypt the message. NOTE A further discussion of how to obtain a certificate file and the details of public and private keys is beyond the scope of this book. My CertificatesThe My Certificates dialog box, shown in Figure 11.14, enables you to obtain a certificate, import an existing certificate, or view and manage the properties of your certificate. This dialog box will show a list of your certificates. Figure 11.14. This dialog box is where you configure your certificates to use in encryption.
You will find the following features on the My Certificates dialog box:
These options are needed for most certificate configurations. Certificate Authorities' CertificatesClicking the Certificate Authorities' Certificates button brings up a dialog box that displays "Intermediate" and "Root" certificates. These are preconfigured lists of Certificate Authorities used worldwide to enable encryption and digital signatures. |