18 years after its launch in Italy, the Certified Electronic Mail (PEC) continue to grind record numbers for activations. The data made available by the Agency for Digital Italy show that in the last two months surveyed to date (May-June 2022), 14,414,551 PEC mailboxes were active in Italy. In growth of about 8% compared to the same period of the previous year, with more than one million mailboxes. In this scenario, Aruba has almost reached 9 million activated PEC mailboxes, confirming its market leadership.
PEC growing, millions of mailboxes activated
Activations grow because grow up the usage. These are work communications, communications with universities, institutions and PAs, participation in calls for tenders and tenders, registration in competitions, cancellation of contracts, just to name a few of the many cases of use. The numbers of PEC messages exchanged speak for themselves: almost 493 million in the two months taken into consideration, the highest value ever recorded by AgID, equivalent to about 12% more than a year ago.
And the trend is still growing. Analyzing the annual data, in 2020, the messages exchanged in one year exceeded 2 billion and 260 million with an average of almost 6.2 million PEC messages sent and received every day. While in 2021, the messages exchanged annually reached almost 2.5 billion. Therefore, over 6.8 million PEC messages were exchanged daily.
PEC growing, evolution of the P.O. box also in Europe
This constant growth is also the result of the structural innovations that have involved the PEC, now ready for imminent interoperability European. In fact, AgID and the Certified Electronic Mail Managers gathered in AssoCertificatori, announced through an official note released on June 27th that the process of defining and publishing the new ETSI EN 319 532-4 standard has been successfully concluded. Specifically, the merit and driving force of Italy was highlighted in the working tables and in the definition of the REM baseline, i.e. the minimum requirements to ensure maximum interoperability in the cross-border use of the service.
Therefore, the PEC evolves and becomes European. It prepares to be a qualified delivery system based on the standard eIDAS, therefore usable beyond national borders for the secure exchange of communications with legal value. Thanks to this important evolution, it will be possible to certify not only the identity of those who have a PEC address in Italy, but of anyone residing in the European Union, as well as the integrity of the content, the time and date of sending/receiving a message.
Identity recognition
The first step of this evolution concerned the recognition of the user who holds the PEC, which Aruba already allows starting from July 2022. To carry out the operation free of charge, it is possible to choose between different methods, through the SPID (Public Digital Identity System); digital signature; the CIE (Electronic Identity Card); the CNS (National Service Card) and – recently added – also through DVO (De Visu Online recognition) with operator.
Safety and ease of use
The second step predicted enabling two-step verification (2FA), also free. In fact, to make the PEC even more secure, a second-level authentication is envisaged. This takes place through the approval of a push notification that the user receives after entering the coupled username and password.
Thanks to these developments, conditions are being created to simplify and enable certified communication across borders. It meets the warranty of a fair, open and secure digital environment as set by the Digital Agenda of the EU.