Introducing New Technology into Italian Certified Electronic Mail: A Proposal

Abstract

Over the last decade, an increasing number of Certified E-Mail systems (CEM) have been implemented in Europe and worldwide, but their diffusion and validity are mainly restricted in a national arena. Despite the effort of European Union (EU) that recently defined a specification for guaranteeing interoperability of CEM systems between Member States, its adoption has not be not yet fuelled, mainly since any CEM system receives a legal value by its State legislation. It is difficult to extend the legal value of CEM security mechanisms, e.g. Receipts with timestamps which are considered evidences and legal proofs in disputes that may arise from different Parties inside a State, unless a common political and legal agreement will be created. At this aim, recently EU introduce the new Regulation on Electronic Identification and Trust Services (eIDAS), to address this issue. We believe that the first step for encouraging a more large adoption between communities is to implement CEMs using standard worldwide recognized solutions. In this paper we propose a technical evolution of the Italian CEM, called Posta Elettronica Certificata (PEC) moving from a close mechanisms to the adoption of a more standardized, distributed solution, based on DNS Security Extensions (DNSSec). This proposal would have a minimal impact on the legislation, restricted to the annex that defines PEC technical rules.