I have been following an interesting blog thread on ZDnet between two of their writers, David Berlind and George Ou. It all started when David took issue with the practice of sending passwords as clear text via email as some websites still do as part of their password reset routine. This brought up the topic of secure email. As David points out:

“The technology exists. It’s just not found in every e-mail client nor are businesses prepared to alter their processes to handle this approach.”

He then goes into further detail explaining why secure email won’t become common place until it is as simple as hitting the send button.

George Ou chimes in, declaring:

“Berlind is reeling over his incorrect perception that the Internet still lacks secure email. The problem is that he’s got it all wrong and the solution has been under his nose all this time and it really isn’t the non-interoperable nightmare he paints it to be. Secure connections between Server to Client, end to end, and Server to Server communications have all been around for a long time. The technology is already baked in to existing software and it’s simply a matter of installing, configuring, or merely enabling the technology.”

The heated dialog continues over a few more posts. Reading their arguments, it becomes apparent that they are both right. Yes, the technology for message encryption, transport security and email signatures exists in many different flavors and has been around for quite some time. However, the true challenge remains - making all the puzzle pieces work seamlessly across the different web and client based email systems so that secure email becomes fully transparent to the end-user. For this to happen successfully, the largest enterprise email vendors (IBM, Microsoft) and web mail providers (Yahoo!, Google, Hotmail, AOL) would all need to agree on a common standard and push for its implementation.

Technorati Tags: secure email, smime, zdnet

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