[TriLUG] transmitting secure emails

Jos Purvis purvis at melete.org
Tue Apr 6 09:36:46 EDT 2010


Chris,

PGP and other organizations offer some software that does pretty much
exactly what you've described, using a PGP server that attaches to
your mail server. The PGP server is then given specific rules (e.g.
"If email is bound for XX.com, then encrypt with the XX.com key") and
then email is either transmitted encrypted to the recipient, or the
recipient can be sent a notification that an encrypted email is
waiting for them, and they can visit an SSL-encrypted page on the PGP
server to retrieve it.

One thing I ran into trying to set this up for a company I worked for
a few years ago was that each bank wanted to use their own system. No
one wanted to use client-based software solutions like PGP or S/MIME,
so we wound up having to vet and support whatever solution the bank
was running. You may run into this, too, so be warned: whatever you
put in place may not be usable by some percentage of the folks you
deal with. :) I'll see if I can find some other solutions besides the
PGP one (they have competitors, just not coming up with names off the
top of my head). As far as I've seen, there aren't any open-source
versions of this, so if you're looking for something free you may be
stuck coding it yourself.

Cheers,

Jos

2010/4/5 Cristóbal Palmer <cmp at cmpalmer.org>:
> On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 9:33 PM, Chris Bullock <cgbullock at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I would like to see what my options are for providing secure transmissions of emails and attachments for my organization.
>
> Can your require the parties you're corresponding with to install
> software, or does this have to be something anybody with any random
> modern web browser and any random modern MUA should be able to access?
> Obviously you'd want to limit yourself to something well-known and
> vetted like TrueCrypt if you were asking them to install something.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Cristóbal M. Palmer
> ibiblio.org systems
> cdla.unc.edu research assistant
> --
> TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> TriLUG FAQ          : http://www.trilug.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions
>



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