Trust is the critical factor for making relationships between consumers and service providers sustainable. It’s vital that service providers are seen to be taking an active role in the privacy and security of their customers’ data – while diversifying and adding value to their offerings.
Hosting, telco and IT industries depend on innovation and the profitability of their infrastructure services, and getting this from a single source is all the more powerful. Open source approaches help deliver the next level of the Internet’s value – after all, much of Google, Facebook and Apple success has been based on an open source philosophy.
The common threats to email security are from communications being intercepted in transit. It has been well documented during the “Summer of Snowden” that foreign intelligence agencies are intercepting email data and storing it – jeopardizing trade secrets and as well as citizens’ privacy. But email is also a major target for cybercrime, from brute force to “Man-in-the-middle” attacks. All of which have been the drivers for launching The Trusted Email Services (TES) together with openBIT e.V. earlier this year.
Through open standards we aim to improve email security in transit between TES member ISPs, telcos, cable providers and enterprises. At OX Summit 2015 I spoke about TES and its importance in the service provider community. During the sessions service providers and software vendors participated in the process to develop and evolve the technical criteria for TES. And the overwhelming attendance from service providers really highlighted the importance of the subject to this community and interest in participating.
The TES certification will reassure consumers that email services displaying the TES badge are trustworthy and can be safe in the knowledge that their privacy will be uncompromised. We encourage all email service providers and software vendors to join us in this process and help develop and evolve the technical criteria for TES.
For more technical details on the TES architecture read: TES whitepaper
Or for further information on the programme and to participate, contact: mikko AT dovecot DOT fi
For a concise backgrounder on TES, this piece by Andrew Orlowski in The Rgister is a must-read.
