Can we send secure email from Mainframe job?

[SivaKumar]

HI,

We use Lotus Notes as e-mail client. In this, there is an option to send secure message by clicking send secure massage. I think this is done by Lotus notes MIME setting for sending secure emails.

Can anyone please tell me if it is possible to send secure email in the same way from XMITP or IEBGENER from mainframe?

[Robert Sample]

You may be able to do so if the Lotus Notes API allows for external secure email -- you will have to do some research to find this out. And you will have to work out how to put together the MIME statements to do what you want; it is unlikely you will find much expertise available for this.

In general, SMTP (which is used for most mainframe emails) does not allow for much beyond basic emails and attachments (SMTP is text-based, for example, so fonts generally won't be supported). HTML in the emails can be sent, since HTML is text-based, but whether or not the email shows the HTML formatting depends upon the mail client.

[SivaKumar]

Hmm...that's discouaging. I'll search more on it.

(SMTP is text-based, for example, so fonts generally won't be supported). HTML in the emails can be sent, since HTML is text-based, but whether or not the email shows the HTML formatting depends upon the mail client.

Using HTML we can use differnt fonts, so when you say "fonts won't be supported", what did you mean?

[Robert Sample]

If the email client does not support HTML, or is not configured for HTML support, then you won't see any fonts in the email -- period. And with HTML support, you are seeing the fonts HTML uses, which may -- or may not -- be the ones you specified in your email source on the mainframe. Without HTML support, all you will see in the email is plain text -- no bold, italics, fonts, size changes -- just plain text.

[DL1]

Search GOOGLE for XMITIP. That's a suite of programs that are designed to send email from z/OS applications. It'll do stuff like attachments and PDFs. Don't know if it does SMTP over TLS (because it's about ten years since I looked at it).

[SivaKumar]

it does SMTP over TLS (because it's about ten years since I looked at it).

I'm sorry but what are you referring toby TLS?

[Robert Sample]

Googling smtp tls returns about 1.9 million hits. TLS is transport layer security and deals with secure transmission of data.