Emails containing personally Identifiable Information (PII) should only be sent to recipients with an official need-to-know. The email must be digitally signed and encrypted. It is against policy to send PII to group email addresses.
Set Up Your Computer to Send Encrypted Emails
- CAC Email Certificate. Ensure the email certificate on your CAC matches your official email address (typically your usna.edu address). If it does not, visit the CAC Office at Naval Station Annapolis to If you are unsure, follow the directions at the following link to verify:
- Outlook Interface. Ensure Outlook is set up properly on your computer for If it is not, either submit a web help desk ticket to IT or following the directions at the following link: To verify if it is set up correctly, open Outlook and begin a draft email. If you have the “Sign” and “Encrypt” buttons in the “Permission” section of the “Options” tab, your email is ready to encrypt. If these options are not available to you, your email is not set up correctly for encryption.
How to Send an Encrypted Email using Microsoft Outlook
- Obtain CAC Certificates. In order to send an encrypted email, you must have the CAC email certificate of every individual you want to receive the message saved to your Outlook There are two ways to do this, but we are only going to discuss the fastest and easiest way which is to use the DoD White Pages. Follow the below steps to find and save email CAC certificates:
- Use the link to go to the DOD White Pages (you will need your CAC site contains email certificates of everyone in the DoD.
- If you know the recipients email, then just type the email address and nothing
- If you do not know the email address, type the last name of the Entering too much information may limit the results of the search. For example, if you enter John Smith and his name is actually Johnathan Smith, the system will not locate the individual you are looking for. Less is more when searching for recipients using the DoD White Pages.
- If you know the desired recipient’s branch of the DoD, then use the scroll down menu to click on the correct option. This could help limit the amount of search results if
- When you find the recipient you are looking for, click on their Do not click on the email address or it will start a draft email.
- Once on this page, click on the “vCard” option This is the certificate you will be saving to your contacts
- Click
- Open the download then Select “Save and ”
- Repeat the necessary steps above to save additional
- Draft Your Email. Once you have saved the certificates of all the desired recipients to your Outlook contacts, follow the below steps to properly draft your email:
- Open up youMicrosoft Outlook. If you haven’t been there in a while, you may need to sync with your Gmail account.
- Select the “New Email”
- Go to the “Options” tab and click on the “Encrypt” and “Sign” buttons. You must select
- In the “To” field, DO NOT TYPE THE EMAIL ADDRESS. If you type the email address in the “To” field, the encryption will fail every time. You need to select the certificate from your contacts.
- Instead, left click on the word “To.” A box containing your contacts should
- Find the recipients you wish to send the email to. This should be the contact(s) that you just saved the email certificates for using the DoD White Pages. If you are searching your contacts using the search engine, sometimes it will find them easier if you use first name for the
- Once you find the correct contact, double click on the name until it shows up in the “To” field of the contacts box. Once all the contacts are in the “To” field, press “OK.” You should now see these contacts in the “To” field of the draft
- If you are sending PII, include “FOUO-PRIVACY SENSITIVE” in the subject of the
- Type the body of your
- If your email contains PII, at the bottom of the body of the email include the following privacy banner: “FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY – PRIVACY SENSITIVE: Any misuse or unauthorized disclosure of this information may result in both criminal and civil penalties.”
- If any attachments contain PII, label them “FOUO-PRIVACY ”
- Sending your Signed and Encrypted Email. Once you verify all the recipients have an official need-to-know the contents of the email, and you have selected both the “Sign” and “Encrypt” options, follow the below directions to send your email:
- Press the “Send”
- If an error pops up, STOP! Something is wrong. If you get an error message, never choose to send the email unencrypted if it contains PII. Sending the message unencrypted will constitute a PII
- If you get an error message, the most likely cause is operator Please ensure you followed all of the above directions correctly. The error could be due to an invalid CAC certificate, typing the email address instead of selecting the contact from the contact list, or one of the recipients CAC certificates could be invalid.
- If an error does not pop up, then the email was sent and properly encrypted
- If you have followed all the directions and are still getting errors, please contact the Privacy Coordinator at 3-1550, or use AMRDEC SAFE to send your email