Why use S/MIME?
The benefits of using S/MIME Certificates are twofold: Email Encryption and Email Signing. Email encryption allows a user to encrypt the contents of their email message so that only the other intended recipient can read the email. The downside of this is that if there are multiple recipients, a separate email must be sent and encrypted to each recipient. Signing allows a user to send emails that guarantee that they came from the sender stated in the email message. Signing emails with S/MIME certificates allows a user to identify them on the public internet and provides a level of validity and authenticity on an otherwise insecure protocol which is email. For example, if you are a lawyer, who is a large client of VeriSign’s S/MIME products, you can encrypt your message, or sign the message if it includes sensitive legal information so that the recipient can guarantee that it came from you and be confident in the authenticity of the message. Chong states that most information that flows
