Interesting comments from a member of the IETF EDI-INT group, which is developing standards for secure EDI over the net, and managing a Commercenet pilot project: - S/MIME and PGP are the two leading candidates for encrypting EDI messages, S/MIME inside the US, and PGP outside the US where S/MIME is unavailable. - If PGP 3.0 comes out on time with promised features, it could gain adoption by large companies as a standard means of encrypting EDI messages; that would pull smaller companies along, but it has a narrow window of opportunity and could lose to S/MIME products like those from Deming. - The G7 governments will impose key escrow on large companies trading over the net, and while non-escrowed systems will continue to be available, they are likely to be illegal, and certainly will be marginalized.