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SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) are cryptographic protocols that are designed to provide communication security over the internet. They use X.509 certificates and hence, asymmetric cryptography to assure the counterparty whom they are talking with and to exchange a symmetric key. This session key is then used to encrypt data flowing between the parties. This allows for data/message confidentiality, and message authentication codes for message integrity and as a by-product message authentication. It is widely used in web browsing, emails, Internet faxing, instant messaging and VoIP. As such, when you are running your own email server and services, it is important to enabling SSL for IMAP and POP3.

Step 1 – Access your web server via SSH.

Step 2 – Go to the dovecot configuration file as below:

vi /etc/dovecot.conf

Step 3 – Inside the configuration file, ensure protocol is enabled. Search for the line below and add in the following if it is not already there.

protocols = imap imaps pop3 pop3s

Step 4 – Add the following codes into your dovecot configuration, right below protocol configuration.

ssl = yes
ssl_cert_file = /etc/exim.cert
ssl_key_file = /etc/exim.key

Step 5 – Save and exit.

Step 6 – Restart dovecot.

/etc/init.d/dovecot restart