The secured e-mail should be used whenever confidential or delicate information is sent by e-mail from University of Oulu to outside or from outside to the university.

N.B. In the university’s internal e-mail traffic in O365 service an additional protection is not needed.

The contents of this instruction:

• Secured mail inside the university
• Sending a confidential message from the university
• Sending a confidential message to the university
• Receiving a confidential message from the university

Secured mail inside the university

• No separate protection is needed when the message goes between @oulu.fi and/or @student.oulu.fi addresses.

Sending from the university

Both the staff and the students can send secured mail from their @oulu.fi or @student.oulu.fi addresses by adding the “.s” to the end of receiver’s email address. The protection level can be chosen to be letter or registered letter.

The recipient can replay to the sender and so the reply message is also secured.

The message will be retained on the server securemail.oulu.fi for 30 days if the recipient does not remove it after reading it.

Choosing a protection level and sending the message:

1) ”Letter”

• Send the message from your university email, type the recipient’s  email address and add “.s” in the end of it, without any spaces. NB. Type the whole address, do not pick it from your address book or message history. Example: maisa.malli@minedu.fi.s
• The recipient gets a link through which she/he can read the message.

2) ”Registered letter”

You need to know the recipient’s mobile phone number to which the service sends a PIN code.

Use the registered letter if on the basis of the e-mail address you cannot be sure about the identity of the recipient. If for example you send the message to a shared address but mean to be read only by the certain person, you will attach to the message her/his telephone number to which the service sends the PIN code needed in the opening phase.

• Send the message from your university email, type the recipient’s  email address and add “.” in the end of it and then continue by typing her/his mobile phone number and add “.s” in the end of the string without any spaces. NB. Type the whole string, do not pick the address from your address book or message history.
• Example: maisa.malli@minedu.fi.0401234567.s
  • The foreign numbers are fed so that the mark “+” (plus) will be replaced with two zeros, “00”, after that the country code and the actual telephone number are added without any spaces. Example: erik.ek@minedu.se.00464741234567.s
• The recipient gets a link through which she/he can read the message. When she/he is opening the message, the PIN code is sent to her/his mobile phone. The PIN is needed to open the message in the service.

Sending a confidential message to the university

The external quarters can send to any of the university’s email address the confidential message after the sender has registered his/her e-mail address. The sending takes place on securemail.oulu.fi server. The message will come to the recipient’s O365 e-mail.

• Register your e-mail address in the service https://securemail.oulu.fi/.
• After that, you’ll receive an email from ”Turvaposti Oulun Yliopisto”. The message contains a personal link which is your key to the university’s service securemail.oulu.fi. NB. If you do not see the email in you inbox soon, please check your spam folder.
• Follow your link, write and send your confidential message in the service. You also can send attachments  with the message.
• At the message view, in the To drop down menu, choose kirjaamo, in case you are sending an official message to the registry office (kirjaamo). Instead, if you want to send your email to someone else, leave the “To” drop down menu as it is, and type the address you want to send the message to in the row below. If you want to send the same message to more than one address, click the add recipient row button (the plus icon) and type the additional address in its own row.
  
• The recipient gets email to her/his O365 mailbox with the note ”Confidential” and ”This mail has been delivered encrypted”.
• Your registration and the personal link will be valid for 10 days.

Receiving a confidential message from the university

When a confidential message has been sent to you from the email address of University of Oulu, you get a notification to your e-mail.  The mention “Luottamuksellinen / Confidential” is seen in the notification and furthermore, there is a link through which you are able to read an actual message from the server securemail.oulu.fi. First check the genuineness of the link: take the mouse over the link and make sure that it leads to the securemail.oulu.fi server. If a link takes somewhere else, it is not a genuine confidential message from University of Oulu.

The sender has specified a protection level for the confidential message as “Letter” or “Registered letter”. You are able to read the message from the securemail.oulu.fi server during 30 days.

Identification with PIN code:

If a sender has specified “Registered letter” as a protection level, it is seen as a heading of the notification received by you. In that case you will need a PIN code to open the message. The PIN code is automatically sent as a text message to that number the sender has defined in the message. The text message is sent from the service at the same moment when you snap the link Avaa viesti / Open message in the notification message.

• Enter the PIN which you received as a SMS, to the PIN field and then snap JATKA (=Continue).
• If you do not get the SMS within a reasonable time, order a new PIN code by snapping TILAA PIN-KOODI (=Order a new PIN).
• If the identification does not succeed, check if your telephone number is correct in the message. Inform, if necessary, the sender of a faulty telephone number by snapping LÄHETÄ ILMOITUS (=Send an announcement).

Reading the message:

A confidential message can be opened through the link in the notification message which has come to your e-mail. Make sure that the link Avaa viesti / Open message takes you just to securemail.oulu.fi server.

• You can reply (VASTAA) the message. The reply message is sent only to the sender, not to the other original receivers. The reply is also secured.
• You can save (TALLENNA) the message and possible attachments as a normal or password protected zip file in your device. The message can be saved as txt or html file. The message can be printed. Anyway, remember that the contents of the message are confidential!
• The message and the possible attachment are temporarily saved in securemail.oulu.fi server and you are able to read them for 30 days. You can remove a message and the possible attachments (POISTA VIESTI), if desired.
• Log out from the service (KIRJAUDU ULOS). When logging out, you can select the identification method in case you will later want to reopen the message. The alternatives are a cookie or a password.
• Empty the buffer storage of the browser, especially, if you operate the computer in the public premises or in common use.

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