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Abstract

The e-mail service is one of the most used network services: electronic mail messages can now easily be delivered in any place where a network connection exists. However, despite the current multi-media oriented spirit of the other popular services, most of the electronic mail traffic is still plain text. While the transport infrastructure is potentially in place, there is a strong need for coordination of multi-media electronic mail services; more over many of the e-mail gateways currently in service are not fully transparent to multi-media messages. At last, also distribution list services need to be refurbished in the spirit of multi-media traffic.

Security is also an important issue: e-mail is more and more used for interpersonal and important communication, but users still hesitate when they come to official use and business matters. In fact while the transport infrastructure proves to be reliable, security is still an unresolved issue in real life service: a new security concerned support infrastructure is needed to supplement e-mail service, and make it usable for official secure communications.

In this paper we analyse the situation in Europe, and the current problems and activities in order to really bring to end users a global multi-media secure e-mail service.