Subject: RE: [Fwd: Last Call: Gateways and MIME Security Multiparts to Pr oposedStandard]

From: Dan Wing <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 7:57:14 -0700

>On a quite similar topic: Is S/MIME or Open PGP emerging as the
>preferred encryption method overall? I've seen MS Exchange and
>Novell GroupWise now have S/MIME but not Open PGP. We have this
>paper-to-e-mail device (pretty much like a one-way Internet Fax)
>and customers request encryption.

PGP is available in Eudora.  S/MIME is available in Netscape, 
Microsoft Outlook, and (as you mentioned above) Microsoft Exchange
and Novell GroupWise.

There are also other non-commercial implementations of OpenPGP as 
well.

From where I sit, it appears companies which are deciding on S/MIME
versus PGP like S/MIME beacuse of its centralized key management.
However, Network Associates' implementation of OpenPGP 6.0 provides
all of the same important features of S/MIME's centralized key
management such as a central authority that can revoke keys, the
ability to escrow keys (which is important in a company should an
employee be run over by a bus, for example).  So I think the decision 
for requesting PGP or S/MIME will become more cloudy before it
becomes clearer.

Honestly, I think this will take a few more years to shake itself out.
 Netscape, Novell, and Microsoft seem to have decided to implement
S/MIME, but users may actually prefer PGP and the degreee of control
that PGP gives them over their own encryption that S/MIME doesn't
allow.

-Dan Wing