encrypted email

In my ISM3004 class we were just taught how to acquire a personal e-mail certificate.  We were also taught step by step how to send a digitally signed and encrypted e-mail message.  We were first told to download Mozilla Thunderbird.  We set it up through our UFL webmail account.  Mozilla Thunderbird was very new and interesting.  It was fun to learn a new way to receive email that I did not even know existed before this class. 
I then downloaded and exported my certificate from VeriSign where I sent a digitally signed email to a professor and then received an email with the professor's public key which I used to send an encrypted email.

Here are both screen captures after I sent and received both emails from the professor

Sending encrypted emails is very important.  Below is a link explaining a situation where NASA failed to secure their Computer System Security.  It ended up endangering the space missions but could have been easily avoided with only a few simple steps.  This failure to secure their computer system could have jeopardized the lives of many innocent people.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/NASA-Failure-to-Secure-Computer-Systems-Endangers-Space-Missions-Audit-741515/

In this article Famida Rashid explains how the Office of the Inspector General found vulnerabilities on six servers.  These vulnerabilities were connected to the National Aeronautics Space Agency. This could have caused ineligibility to Space Shuttle, International Space Station and even Hubble Telescope missions.  People claimed they had taken in account for vulnerabilities such as the ones that happened however Inspector General Paul K. Martin states how NASA failed to have a security program finding these problems as soon as they arose.  NASA has known about this for over a year and has still failed to enforce this.

This is such a simple task that someone would have to perform to avoid all of these insecurities and vulnerabilities NASA has been faced with.

NASA was also not properly disposing hard drives which exposed sensitive data.  They were not taking the precautionary steps necessary when dealing with the important information and data that NASA sends and receives every day.  They did not properly verify sanitation procedures.