Digital Signatures


Introduction

The range of potential business opportunities and enhanced customer convenience services offered by the Internet is phenomenal, ranging from home banking to network shopping and on-line information subscription services. As the boundaries are pushed back, security becomes an ever-greater concern and controlling access becomes a major issue for companies offering eCommerce services.

A particular necessity for any business is to be able to verify information passed to them.

Verification would require the following points to be catered for within any mechanism for transferring the information:

• Authentication - Verifying the identity of the sender;
• Integrity - Verifying that the information passed has not been changed, either accidentally or maliciously;
• Confidentiality - Only the intended recipient is able to retrieve the information;
• Non-Repudiation - A sender of a document at one end of a transmission cannot deny having sent the message nor can the recipient deny having received it.

In order that these specifications are achieved a standard method of exchange must be used which encompasses all of them. This is the basis of a digital signature; the electronic equivalent of a hand-written signature that can be checked.