THIS SITE IS NOW ARCHIVED
To enquire about past activities of this now dormant forum, please email

The Messaging Forum works to maintain and enhance the effectiveness of email for inter-personal communication and as a backbone for e-commerce. It seeks to increase the effectiveness of electronic messaging and provide interoperable solutions through education, fulfillment of customer-driven requirements, promotion and endorsement of standards based solutions, and influencing public policy.

What We Do
The Forum brings together enterprise messaging and voice systems IT managers with vendors of messaging products and consultants to address:

Secure Messaging
Investigating web based secure email and several different email encryption scenarios, including client-to-client and secure messaging gateways, and defining a Secure Messaging Gateway profile and certification program.
more

Spam
Documenting ways for managers to minimize the effects of spam received in corporate messaging systems, as well as sent using insecure mail relays.
more

Sender-ID
Establishing an architecture defining the role of Sender-ID in the structure of the internet email system and promoting the use of Sender-ID.
more

Sender-ID
Integrating existing Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Message Transfer Agent specifications, and establishing a certification program.
more

Instant Messaging
Providing guidance on introducing instant messaging into an enterprise environment.
more

Unified Messaging
Defining the business benefits and barriers to its deployment.

Current Projects

• E-mail - The big picture architecture
  Developing a guide to internet email architecture.
• Bridging the Bridges :
  Analyzing potential barriers to cross recognition of security certificates.
• Manager’s Guide to Coping with Spam
  Developing version 2.
• S/MIME Gateway Certification
  Developing S/MIME Gateway profile version 2.
• Sender-ID Certification
  Defining a certification program for the Sender-ID mechanism to authenticate email sending domains.
• Instant Messaging
  Joint effort with E E M A to address Instant Messaging.
• Unified Messaging Business Scenario

Key Accomplishments

• Secure Messaging Challenge
  A successful demonstration of the exchange of highly encrypted email between products from multiple vendors.
  more
• Secure Messaging Toolkit
  Defines how to implement the Challenge.
  more
• S/MIME Gateway Profile
  Definition of the S/MIME Version 3.1 Message Specification [MSG31] to support gateway-to-gateway S/MIME protected messages.
  more
• S/MIME Gateway Certification
  Program to guarantee interoperability of products that encrypt email at the domain gateway. Numerous vendor products have been certified.
  more
• Certified products register.
  more
• Outstanding e-Business Infrastructure Requirements
  Paper highlighting business requirements of user organizations.
• Spam Survey
  Worldwide cross industry survey on the impacts of spam
• Manager’s Guide to Coping with Spam
  more
• Managing Spam - a Call to Action
  A statement of the problem
  more
• Privacy Toolkit
• Message Retention Toolkit
• Telecommuting Toolkit
• Instant Messaging Problem Statement

Publications

• The Managers Guide to Coping with Spam
• S/MIME Gateway Profile
• S/MIME Gateway Certification Policy

Work Area
Messaging Forum work area

More Information
For more information about the Messaging Forum, please email
email