Patent ID: 7730297

Claim:
A computer program product, tangibly stored on a machine-readable medium, comprising a first application's instructions to perform operations on a client comprising: generating a first container object, the first container object having a recognizable container type that is associated with the first application, the first container object containing a sender's certificate or a request for a recipient's certificate, and where generating the first container object includes putting the certificate or request in the container object; using a second application on the client distinct from the first application to transmit the first container object to a recipient's address, wherein the second application is an e-mail client application or a Web browser application; automatically obtaining a second container object from the second application, the second container object having been received by the second application and the second container object having the same recognizable container type as the first container object; and automatically identifying and extracting one or more certificates from within the second container object.