If you are using Outlook 2003 with a Microsoft Exchange server for your email, typically in a corporate environment, you may be interested to know that you can encrypt all network communications between the Outlook client and the server, to protect against potential hackers sniffing out your email traffic.

First, select Tools and then E-mail Accounts from the dropdown menu:

By default, a wizard screen will pop up with “View or change existing e-mail accounts” selected as the default. Choose next at this screen.

You will see a screen with your E-mail Accounts here. Select the one that says “Microsoft Exchange Server”, and then click the Change button:

Click the More Settings button on the next page:

Click the Security tab on the next page and you will see this screen:

Make sure that you check the “Encrypt data” checkbox. This will ensure that all communications between the Outlook client and the Exchange server are encrypted.