While it is interesting to see the big "boys" fight, I want to
summarize my feelings regarding PEM and the WEB. This is a user's
perspective. A few points:
1) Comparing PEM with the WEB is like comparing apples to oranges.
PEM is much limited in scope and only deals with secure e-mail while
the WEB deals with all kinds of information and resources, from telnet
to gopher, and more. The WEB obviously enjoys more usage because it
offers more services albeit unsecured.
2) While it has been shown that the unsecured version of the WEB has
been embraced relatively fast, it is not immediately obvious that the
secure version will be embraced at comparable rate. This is because
security is cumbersome for ordinary users and there are issues still
open such as the key management, performance tradeoffs (packetization
of encrypted data and incremental integrity checking), and last but
not least the prospect of standardizing competing proposals.
One of the *major* disadvantages of PEM was the lack of a free, GUI,
easy to use interface available on *all* platforms and for all e-mail
packages currently used by all users. In other words, we chose to
secure a difficult application. The WEB on the other hand became
successful because they addressed this GUI issue. I don't think that
the X.509 or CA infrastructure stoped or is stoping PEM (technically)
and I don't think that introducing MIME-PEM will change that because
it makes it harder for non-MIME aware mailers to integrate security.
Perhaps the market drive (electronic commerce) will provide a greater
incentive for people to secure the WEB than e-mail using PEM/PGP. I
think this is a key factor in what is to come....
_______________________________________________________________________
Alireza Bahreman _/_/_/ _/_/
RRC-1K221, 444 Hoes Lane, _/ _/ _/_/ _/_/ _/__/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/_/
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bahreman(_at_)bellcore(_dot_)com _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/
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