The i-Flame system tries to maintain a flexible approach to authentication and encryption. These are still volatile areas of development and there are many competing systems. Without proper authentication, the capabilities of the ACL controlled system are weakened. As a minimum, login-password pairs provide a LCD system. Also, a PGP signature system would provide a more widely available mechanism for authentication.
Encryption is important in protecting client message data.
If no crypto system is available, possibly due to export control problems, the system can operate without one. No commonly used systems currently provide built in encryption. We will explore the DES capabilities provided by the Kerberos libraries as well as PGP, the 'Net's de facto standard for person to person encryption. The i-Flame system hopes to eliminate many of the problems of its predecessors as well as provide new functionality. The primary potential is because of its unique client heavy design with a server maintained cache.