The new Nokia E61 supports Exchange Activesync (Mail for Activesync) and syncs fine with SSL if you are using a certificate from a renowned Certificate Authority like Verisign(since these certificates are preinstalled on the phone). The problem arises when you need to install your own self signed certificate from a Windows Server Certificate Authority onto your phone to sync with SSL to your Exchange Server 2003. You need to install the certificate on your device in order for it to trust the site you are connecting to [this behavior is by design of the Exchange Activesync-AirSync protocol, even with Windows Mobile devices]. So in order to export and install an SSL certificate from your OWA website to your Nokia smartphone, you need to do the following:

1) Go to your OWA url (eg. https://mail.mydomain.com)
2) You should see the SSL lock icon down at the botton
3) Double click on it, go to the Details tab and click on “Copy to File”
4) On the Certificate Export Wizard, go to Next.
5) Select the first option “DER encoded binary X.509(.CER)”, click Next
6) Give the File a name and save it to your desktop and click Finish

Now transfer the .CER extension file to your phone’s memory. Install it by clicking on the .CER file from a File Manager. It will ask about Importing the certificate. Choose yes. That’s it. Now your self signed SSL certificate is trusted on the device and should no longer have problems synching wirelessly with the Exchange Server.

Important: If you have a chain of certificates in your certificate’s Certification Path (check https://mail.google.com for example), you need to export and install all the certificates in the chain if they are not from a renowned CA or preinstalled on the device.

Alternate method:

Go to http://certificateservername/certsrv from your Nokia web browser and download the certificate in a DER format.