Once the user or organization has done some fact finding and is in the market for an email encryption product, keep the following things in mind. This assumes that the code is available for testing. Untested code is dangerous, as Netscape can attest to with Communicator 4. Netscape has published its Communicator 5 code for testing. Yet, not all companies do this.
Third parties tied to academic cryptography bodies do the best testing.
Mature in this context means the software has been in use for at least three years, undergone testing and review and continues to be used. In 1997, PC Magazine reviewed several email encryption systems. Two years later, some of these products and their companies are impossible to find, or perhaps worse, might no longer exist. The user needs to assess whether the product can support the traffic of e-mails generated. He or she needs to decide whether the product provides the required protection needed.