Official and Certified Email

["Mclaughlin, Kevin (mclaugkl)" <mclaugkl () UCMAIL UC EDU>]

Hi All:

Has anyone conquered yet how to have (example) their president send out an email with a link in it and have folks 
comfortable that it is not a phishing scheme?   I now have community members ringing our phones off the hook when 
United Way, Fine Arts, etc. emails come to them with instructions to click the link.  I applaud the fact that as a 
profession our awareness campaigns are working but am now struggling with the concept of how to create an official 
email that everyone who receives it knows to trust. Certificates, IMO, are not the answer as most people don't even 
know what the little certificate icon means, let alone how to hover over it to see if a message is authentic or not.  
Of course, that could just be a training issue that needs to start at a young age in order to get people used to 
looking for a "President's certificate" or a "Help Desk Certificate", etc.  I suspect though (just a SWAG here on my 
part) that we will need to figure out an easier solution.   Any ideas or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

-Kevin

Kevin L. McLaughlin
MS,CISM, CISSP, GLSC, PMP, ITIL Manager Certified
Director, Information Security
University of Cincinnati