SIEMENS E-Mail Encryption with Business Partners User Guide
- June 9, 2024
- SIEMENS
Table of Contents
**E-Mail Encryption with Business Partners
User Guide
** E-mail encryption with business partners
(Guideline for business partners)
Intention of the document:
This guideline is written for Siemens business partners who need to communicate with their partners at Siemens via encrypted emails. It describes the system requirements and the necessary configurations (Outlook and Windows) to enable a secure communication (signed and/or encrypted emails). It shows especially the possibilities for key exchange. Please contact your Siemens partner if you have any problems.
Prerequisites on business partner side
2.1 Certificates:
The business partner needs certificates to send encrypted e-mails.
There are different standards for certificates. X.509(S/MIME) is supported by
Microsoft Outlook and many other programs, therefore this standard should be
used for secure communication. Because of this reason all Siemens employees
are equipped with their own X.509 certificates. PGP is only supported as a
sideline and is available for Siemens employees only on demand.
If your organization has its own trust center or your company is using a
public trust center it should be used to obtain certificates. A few known
public trust centers which are already listed in the Siemens IT infrastructure
are:
- Verisign (http://www.verisign.com/)
- TC Trust Center (http://www.trustcenter.de/en/index.htm),
- Telesis (http://www.telesec.de/)
2.2 Prerequisites for Software:
To encrypt with X.509 certificates your e-mail program has to support this
standard. Also it has to evaluate the “key usage” field in the certificate.
Outlook (since version 2003) already contains an encryption functionality
which is compatible to the Siemens PKI and can be used without any further
installation.
The following user guideline describes which steps have to be taken before a
business partner and a Siemens employee can exchange encrypted and signed
emails on the example of Outlook 2003. Therefore it is necessary that the
business partner has installed his certificates in his e-mail program.
Possibilities for certificate exchange
Depending on the number of communication partners, different possibilities for
certificate exchange are useful.
These alternatives can be applied:
- Basically the usage of the Siemens external repository is recommended. This is a directory service for PKI keys in the Internet. It enables secure communication with every Siemens employee. This repository contains the latest certificates of Siemens employees. After setting up of the repository, no separate key exchange is needed any more. But it must be possible to send LDAP request over the internet. Otherwise this option is not possible. Please contact your network administrator in case of problems with LDAP-requests.
- If the usage of the Siemens external repository is not possible or the business partner does not have a repository on the Internet, certificates must exchanged manually.
Guideline for business partners:
„Outlook Native encryption“
4.1 Transfer of own certificates to the Siemens partner
This paragraph describes how a business partner can transfer his own
certificates to a Siemens employee.
Check out if the Siemens employee is able to send you an encrypted e-mail. If
this is possible, no other actions have to be taken because a direct access to
the directory service of your organization is possible.
If this is not the case, please send a signed e-mail to your Siemens partner.
Please check the following settings so that he can access your certificates
from your e-mail:
-
Open Outlook and the menu Tools Options, in the tab security click below “encrypted emails” on “Settings…”
(Since Outlook 2007: Tools Trust Center in the Section „E-mail Security”)
Activate in the following window “Change Security Settings” (Since Outlook 2007: on “Settings…”) the option “send these certificates with signed messages” -
Close all windows with “OK”
-
Send a signed e-mail to your Siemens partner. In such an e-mail all your certificates which are necessary for a secure communication are added automatically.
4.2 Transfer of Siemens certificates to a business partner
4.2.1 Usage of the Siemens external repository or http directory service of
Siemens or the European Bridge-CA
4.2.1.1 Siemens Root Signing
Root signing certificates are certificates that you can use to sign other
certificates that are linked up to a trusted root certificate. Since Siemens
has its own Certification Authority the certificates of a Siemens employee are
usually valid at the business partner.
4.2.1.2 Integration of the Siemens External Repository
The usage of the Siemens External Repository is generally recommended. It is
possible to access all certificates of Siemens employees from the Internet.
Once the External Repository is installed, no further key exchanges are
necessary. Make sure that the integration of the repository is not blocked by
your Firewall policies.
Follow these instructions for the integration:
-
Open the Outlook menu Tools
E-mail Accounts.
(Since Outlook 2007: Tools Account Settings in the tab “Address Books”) -
Choose the Radio-Button “Add a new directory or address book” (Since Outlook 2007: On “New…”)
This wizard will allow you to change the e-mail accounts and directories that Outlook uses.
- Choose “Internet Directory Service (LDAP)”.
- The Server name is: “cl.siemens.com“. Click on More Settings.
- Change to the tab “Search” and enter the Search base: “o=Trust center”.
- Continue with OK.
- Click in the previous Window Finish.
- Note: It is necessary to restart Outlook to use the directory service.
- At the end it is necessary that the directory services are in the right order in the address Book. Please open your address book
- Click on “tools” and then on “Options”
- Make sure that the directories are in the right order.
4.2.1.3 HTTP Directory or European Bridge CA
Siemens is providing a HTTP Directory service where Certificates of all
Siemens employees can be downloaded via the following link:
http://cl.siemens.com
Above that is Siemens a member of the European Bridge-CA. That is why you can
get all certificates of all Siemens employees via the HTTP-Directory Service
of the European Bridge-CA, too. This HTTP-Directory Service can be found
here: https://www.ebca.de/en/tools/finding-certificates/
To find a certificate, just enter the email address of the employee and save
all offered certificates to your hard drive. If the saved certificates are
.cart-Files you must change it into .cero-Files because the other files are
not supported.
In order for Outlook to use these downloaded certificates, you need to add
them to an Outlook contact. Follow these instructions to add a certificate to
a contact:
- Open your Outlook contacts and the contact of the Siemens employee you want to communicate with securely.
- Choose the tab “Certificates” and click on Import.
- Choose the directory in which you saved the downloaded certificates and mark them for import.
- Leave the contact via Save and Close.
- Redo this for all Siemens employees you want to communicate with securely.
4.2.2 Manual certificate exchange via signed e-mail
If you cannot use the European Bridge-CA, p
lease ask your communication partner at Siemens to send you a signed
e-mail.
After you have received the signed e-mail you should be able to communicate
securely with the Siemens employee. Normally there are no further actions
necessary. If there appears a “Digital Signature: Invalid” reference,
please follow the instruction below.
Follow these instructions if you have received a signed e-mail with a
“Digital Signature: Invalid” reference:
- This window opens if you receive a signed email, whose Root-CA Certificate was not yet imported. ****
- To import the CA-Certificates that come with the signed email, click on Trust afterwards a “Security Warning” appears, that asks you to verify the fingerprint of the certificate.
- Click on YES to import this certificate into your Windows Certificate Store.
- Click with your right mouse-button on the Sender’s email address.
- Choose the menu option Add to Contacts. Hereupon the contact window with the user’s details opens. Open the “certificate” tab and check if the certificates were imported.
- Leave the contact via Save and Close.
- Repeat this for all the business partners you want to communicate with securely.
Note: The signatures of the business partners will only be displayed as valid after opening the e-mail again.
Final settings for first usage in Outlook
To use e-mail encryption now the right certificate and the suitable encryption mode has to be chosen. Please consider that you can ignore this chapter if you have already installed and used e-mail encryption before on your system.
Please follow these steps:
- Start Outlook
- On Tools Options on the tab „Security“ you can find information to send encrypted e-mails. Click on “Settings”, located next to “My S/MIME Settings”
- Choose the suggested certificate right next to „Signing Certificate“. Then choose a encryption algorithm. Siemens demands “3DES” here. Close everything with „OK“. If “3DES” is not available, it could happen that a weaker encryption method will be used. In this case the email cannot be read by Siemens employees. To solve this problem, please contact your Siemens partner and refer to the corresponding manual for Siemens employees.
- Close Outlook and restart it to assume the changes.
Corporate Information Technology
Date: 2013-07-15
Document type: user description
Version: 3.2
Author: Editorial team PKI
cio.siemens.com
E-mail encryption with business partners
Date 2013-07-15
©Siemens AG 2013
Author CIT G ISEC