Secure MIME

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What Does Secure MIME Mean?

Secure MIME (S/MIME) is an Internet standard for digitally signing MIME-based email data and its public key encryption. It was initially developed by RSA Security, Inc. and is based on the company’s public key encryption mechanism. Most email services and software use S/MIME to secure email communication.

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Techopedia Explains Secure MIME

S/MIME enables email security features by providing encryption, authentication, message integrity and other related services. It ensures that an email message is sent by a legitimate sender and provides encryption for incoming and outgoing messages.

To enable S/MIME based communication, the sender and receiver must be integrated with public key and signatures issued from a certificate authority (CA). A digital signature is used to validate a sender’s identity, whereas a public key provides encryption and decryption services.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.