Public Key Infrastructure for Messaging Security

Abstract Changes in IT infrastructure enable new classes of applications to exist. For example, the proliferation of the personal computer in the 1980s enabled office automation applications to gain critical mass, while deployment of TCP/IP in the early 1990s set the stage for client/server deployment and the widespread use of Web technologies. Simply put, infrastructure enables applications. The next major wave of applications will revolve around electronic commerce, which relies on a number of infrastructure technologies, not the least of which are TCP/IP and Web technologies. However, there is one key enabling technology for these applications which is not yet sufficiently deployed — public key encryption.