A digital signature is a mathematical proven plan froe explaining the originality of digital messages or documents. A digital signature gives a reason to believe that the message was established by a known sender, that the sender cannot contradict having sent the message, and that the message was not changed in the movement.
The digital signatures are a benchmark element of most cryptographic protocol suites, and are usually used for the financial transactions, software distribution, and in other cases where it is necessary to find out cheating or tampering.
A digital signature generally consists three algorithms:
• A key generation algorithm
• A signature algorithm
• A signature verifying algorithm
Clarification
The digital signatures are used to implement electronic signatures that refer to any electronic data that has the intent of a signature, though many electronic signatures may not use digital signatures. In many instances digital signatures provide validity and security for a non-secure channel. If used properly, these signatures give the receiver a reason to believe that the message is sent from a trusted channel. These signatures work equivalently to handwritten signatures in many aspects, but are more difficult to implement. The digital signatures are to implemented properly to gain effectiveness.
Components of a digital signature
• Public key for the verification of digital signature
• Name and e-mail address for identity details
• Name of the company to identify to which company does the digital signature belongs
• The digital ID serial number that is a unique number for identification and tracking
• Digital signature of the Certification Authority of India
Different classes of Digital Signature Certificates
The Digital Signature Certificates can be classed as:
• Class 0- These certificates can only be assigned for test purposes.
• Class 1- These certificates shall be assigned to individuals.
• Class 2-These certificates can be assigned to both private and business individuals.
• Class 3- These certificates can be assigned to individuals as well as business organizations.
Benefits
When organizations move away from paper documents and ink signatures or stamps, digital signatures can deliver more added assurances of the evidence to the identity, and status of an electronic document. Digital signatures work equivalently to formly handwritten signatures in many respects; properly implemented digital signatures are have following benefits:
• Originality: Digital signatures can be often used to prove the original source of messages. When buying a digital signature you get a secret key which is bound to a specific person, a signature displays that the message was sent by that user rather than by a random person.
• Data Integrity: In many perspectives, the sender and receiver of the message may have a need for confidence that the message has not been changed during transmission through the electronic channel. Although encryption secures and hides the contents of a message, it may be possible to alter an encrypted message without knowing it. However, if a message is digitally signed, any alteration in the message after signature will disprove the signature. There is no efficient way to upgrade a message and its signature to produce a new message with a valid signature, because this is still regarded to be computationally futile by most cryptographic functions in digital market.
• Non-cancellation: These digital signatures can also provide non-cancellation, meaning that the sender cannot claim she/he did not sign the message, while also accepting their private key remains secret. Some non-cancellation projects offer a time stamp for guaranty of the digital signature, so that even if the private key is exposed, the signature is valid nevertheless.
Who uses digital signature?
Digital signatures are mainly used by:
• Government works that involve contracts, agreements, license or any other important documents
• Organization that need regular approvals of their work through different departments
• Organizations having field sales that need to complete and sign contracts or documents regularly
• Travelling executives whose signatures are necessary for execution of permissions and different processes
• Companies collaborating with external partners for work
Validity of digital signatures
Generally an organization or a person can have a digital signature for a time of one or two year. The digital signature certificates have a start date an explicit expiration date. A certificate is removed from the list of digital signature when its natural expiry date arrives. The digital signature expiration date is also used to manage the CRL (Certificate Revocation List). Generally, the shorter the certificate validity the shorter is the CRL.
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