HERNDON, Va. -- The Transglobal Secure Collaboration Program (TSCP) today announced a major breakthrough in its effort to make e-mail a viable communication channel in the rigorous environment where global government defense organizations and partners do business: the release of its Secure E-mail specification.

The TSCP’s Secure E-mail specification directly addresses the need to eliminate e-mail’s inherent identity and data transmission security flaws, allowing users to safely send and receive sensitive information user to user and desktop to desktop. The requirements were defined and endorsed by the members of the TSCP: U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), U.K. Ministry of Defence (MoD), BAE Systems, Boeing, EADS, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Rolls-Royce.

The implementation is based on TSCP-defined specifications available publicly on www.tscp.org. The specification provides step-by-step instructions organizations must follow to assign vetted identity information to all e-mail senders and recipients. The currently deployed implementation was constructed with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions, open source software and a commercial trusted third-party service, CertiPath. The resulting architecture guarantees that information only travels to and from trusted parties.

“The most basic collaboration tool is e-mail, but it was never designed for security,” said Jim Cisneros, Deputy Chief Information Officer (CIO), Future Combat Systems (FCS) at Boeing, and Chair of the TSCP. “Trusting the authenticity and accuracy of e-mails is imperative for government organizations, prime contractors and our suppliers to jointly develop new technologies and respond to emerging threats.”

g/ Transglobal Secure Collaboration Program (TSCP)