Start of Content Area

Process documentation'Opening' a Digital Envelope (Develope)  Locate the document in its SAP Library structure

Purpose

You "open" a digital envelope if you are the intended recipient or viewer of a digital document that has been secured by a digital envelope.

Prerequisites

The prerequisites are:

Process Flow

As an end user, you generally indicate that you want to "open" a digital envelope and the system does the rest.

Note

This step may also include a part of a business workflow where the system requests the opening of a digital envelope before proceeding. You do need to give the system explicit access to your private key, for example, by providing a PIN or passphrase that allows the system to access the smart card or file where your secret key is stored.

The following graphic shows what happens when you "open" a digital envelope:

'Opening' a Digital Envelope

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

The following explains what happens at each step:

  1. The recipient applies his or her private key to the encrypted message key.

    2. The result is the secret key that was originally used to encrypt the digital document.

  2. The secret key that was revealed in the previous step is used to decrypt the digital document.

Result

The intended recipient (the owner of the corresponding private key) can view the contents of the digital document.