How Certified Electronic Mail works

CEM accelerates contacts between Public Administrations and businesses, rendering document transmissions more secure and economical. Let’s look in detail at how it works.

1. The sender (user A) sends a message to the recipient via his administrator’s Certified Electronic Mail server (access point), following verification of his access credentials.

2. The administrator sends an acceptance or non-acceptance receipt to the sender’s mailbox (user A), on the basis of formal checks performed on the message sent. Receipts are marked with the date and time of the event, the subject of the message and information on the sender and addressee, as well as a non-acceptance cause if applicable.

3. The message is then enclosed within another S/MIME type message (called a transmission envelope) that is digitally signed by the administrator and sent to the point of reception (recipient’s administrator).

4. The reception point checks the sender administrator’s signature and verifies the message’s validity. If the outcome is positive, it then sends a receipt saying that the message has been accepted to the sender administrator’s server, and sends the message to its delivery point.

5. The delivery point makes the message available in the recipient’s mailbox (user B), at which point the recipient (user B) can read the Certified Electronic Mail message (point 8).

6. The delivery point then sends a receipt of the message’s confirmed delivery to the sender administrator.

7. The sender administrator makes the receipt of the message’s confirmed delivery available in the sender’s mailbox (user A).
If the message is sent simultaneously to several Certified Electronic Mail recipients, the sender will be provided with a single acceptance receipt and many confirmed delivery receipts, or non-confirmed delivery receipts, one for each addressee.
If, on the other hand, the message is sent to one or more ordinary mail recipients (non-certified mail), as well as having no legal value, no delivery receipt confirmations will be generated.