Using Advanced Security to Secure Messages

If your organization has installed the Key Management component on a Key Management server (KM server), you can use advanced security. Advanced security allows users who need to send and receive confidential messages to digitally sign and encrypt them. This security measure provides a higher degree of protection than built-in features such as message sensitivity, which marks messages as personal, private, or confidential. Advanced security actually prevents unauthorized persons from tampering with messages.

Advanced security uses the following industry standard cryptography methods to provide security:

• Digital signatures, which ensure that messages aren't modified during transit. They also prevent forgeries by allowing users to place the equivalent of their signatures on messages. The recipient can then be certain that the message originated from the sender.
• Data encryption, which provides confidentiality by ensuring that only the intended recipients can read a message.

Administrators who work in organizations that use advanced security to protect highly sensitive information should understand how advanced security works so they can be confident that Microsoft Exchange Server provides the level of protection their systems require.