More CDs lost in the post

[Ian Batten]

On 23 Jan 08, at 1619, Peter Tomlinson wrote:

> That reminded me about Government Connect, a programme to provide  
> secure email for all public sector organisations and also their  
> 'clients' (all organisations with which they exchange data that  
> needs to be kept secure within DPA definitions - e.g. nursing  
> homes). Once this is deployed, the moving of data on CDs should stop.

Within a closed user group, why wouldn't squirrelmail with https:  
access and SMTP servers which only accept connections which can  
supply a certificate signed with the appropriate key(s) be  
sufficient?  Yes, I realise it would only be as strong as the weakest  
link (ie if you can forge mail into one node, it will be passed as  
valid to another), but incorporating an X.509 infrastructure would  
massively increase the complexity.

Indeed, if you want secure mail for a community, what's wrong with  
squirrelmail over https on a system that has no means to exchange  
mail elsewhere?

ian