Secure Email

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NOTE: This service is currently not available.

A digital certificate allows you to send secure emails to our Office, whether it be a complaint or an enquiry, by encrypting your emails. By securing your email communication with a digital certificate, you increase the security of all your outgoing and incoming email communication. The OPC has taken this initiative to allow users who wish to communicate with us in a secure manner to download a free digital certificate from our website. OPC digital certificates can be used to:

• Encrypt your outbound emails to our Office to prevent unauthorised access during transmission;
  
• Sign your outgoing email so that the recipient knows the email came from your email address.

Benefits

An OPC digital certificate offers the following benefits:

• Confidentiality - emails are transmitted between you and the OPC securely in encrypted form;
  
• Authenticated users - The recipient of email can trust that the email has come from the sender if the email is digitally signed (optional).

Risks & Disadvantages

• If you lose your digital certificate (eg: through computer malfunction) your access to your encrypted email is also lost. This risk is offset by keeping a backup of the certificate on a removable storage device in a secure location;
  
• Encryption uses more resources, hence is a bit slower than normal emails;
  
• Encrypting emails is relatively more complex than sending plain text emails when initially setting up the secure mode.

Liability

The OPC takes no responsibility for any loss of data or email or any computer configuration and support. We offer this facility to enable people who wish to communicate with us over the internet by secure means.

Email software that can be used with these digital certificates

• Microsoft Outlook
  
• Microsoft Outlook Express
  

There are other email clients which may be used. However, we have not been able to test them. Users who wish to use other clients may contact relevant vendors for support.

How can I get a digital certificate?

Note: this service is currently not available.

A simple registration process allows you to install the digital certificate on your computer. The certificate will be valid for five years.

Warning to Microsoft Vista™ users: Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 does not currently support this certificate. You may experience difficulties during the installation.

Supporting Information

• How to send and receive encrypted emails using Microsoft Outlook 2003 - PDF, Word
  
• How to export the digital certificate - PDF, Word
  
• How to import the digital certificate - PDF, Word
  
• How to remove the digital certificate - PDF, Word