MIME-based Secure Peer-to-Peer Business Data Interchange over the Internet

This document describes how to exchange structured business data securely using SMTP transport for Electronic Data Interchange, (EDI either the American Standards Committee X12 or UN/EDIFACT, Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport), XML or other data used for business to business data interchange. The data is packaged using standard MIME content-types. Authentication and privacy are obtained by using Cryptographic Message Syntax (S/MIME) or OpenPGP security body parts. Authenticated acknowledgements make use of multipart/signed replies to the original SMTP message.