Patent ID: 7305545

Claim:
An automated encryption system for encrypting an electronic message from a sender to a recipient comprising: a computer readable medium in communications with a sender's e-mail client; a set of encrypted private keys associated with senders' ID's and passwords stored in said computer readable medium; a set of computer readable encryption instructions embodied in the computer readable medium for receiving the electronic message from the e-mail client that is created by the sender and addressed to the recipient having the sender's ID and password, attempting to decrypt the sender's private key according to the sender's ID and password, if the sender's private key is successfully decrypted, attempting to retrieve the recipient's public key from the computer readable medium; if the sender's private key is successfully decrypted, and the recipient's public key is not located in the computer readable medium, attempting to retrieve the recipient's public key from a PKI server in communications with the computer readable medium, encrypting said electronic message according to the recipient's public key, forwarding the encrypted message to the recipient for subsequent retrieval so that the electronic message is automatically encrypted and delivered to the recipient without the need for the email client to retrieve the recipient's public key or encrypt the message.