Re: Message Security Protocol

Santosh Chokhani (chokhani@sisko.cygnacom.com)
Fri, 9 Feb 1996 12:26:02 -0500

This group should evaluate the Message Security Protocol (MSP) for the 
e-mail.  There are numerous advantages to considering MSP for the e-mail 
tranport mechanism:

1. Lot of good work has been done with tax payer's money to develop a 
protocol that offers a wide variety of security services in a flexible 
manner.  We should capitaize on that work.

2. The protocol is ASN.1 and BER based, providing for ease in 
interoperability among hetereogenous platforms.

3. The protocol has been designed with sender and receiver requirements 
in terms of certificate path processing.

4.  Various commercial vendors are already working on building MSP 
compliant products.

5.  It is being standardized in the public sectors internationally.

6.  The security and processing efficiency services include, signature, 
encryption, rule-based access control, receipt generation, orginator 
identity (X.509) certificate path, originator attribute certificate path, 
message security label (used for rule-based access control), mail list 
handling, etc.