January 2013 - Informatics

E-Gov Products & ServicesDIGITAL SIGNING TOOL FOR SECURE DOCUMENTSAutomation has become anintegral part anyorganization throughinformation digitalizationleaving away the manualprocess using physicalpaper documents. Insteadof routing the paperdocuments manually, theelectronic channels havebeen used extensively fortransitioning the documentsin digital form. But themajor challenges ofmaintaining identity,authenticity and security ofthe document for furtheracknowledgement andapproval in the wholetransition process.NAVNEET KAURScientific Officer/Engineer –SBnavneet.kaur@nic.inThe physical paperdocument with inksignatures or authenticitystamps can raise thequestions of trust due to the lack ofuniqueness, privacy and durability,where an electronic document withdigital signature can provide addedassurances of the evidence toprovenance of identity, authority, andstatus of the document as well asacknowledging informed consent andapproval by a signatory.DIGITAL SIGNATURES VS. INK ONPAPER SIGNATURESAn ink signature can be applied in apaper document only and can bereplicated from one document toanother by copying the imagemanually or digitally, but to havecredible signature copies that can resistsome scrutiny is a significant manualor technical skill, and to produce inksignature copies that resist professionalscrutiny is very difficult. Also in aphysical paper document there isalways a concern about its durability.Digital signatures cryptographicallybind an electronic identity to anelectronic document and the digitalsignature cannot be copied to anotherdocument. Paper contracts sometimeshave the ink signature block on the lastpage, and the previous pages may bereplaced after a signature is applied.Digital signatures can be applied to anentire document, such that the digitalsignature on the last page will indicatetampering if any data on any of thepages have been altered, but this canalso be achieved by signing with ink allpages of the contract.Also the signing process of aphysical document requires physicalrouting to the signatory whichincreases organizational costs, requiresadditional time, and prohibits anorganization from realizing the truebenefits of information digitalization.In contrast, a digital signature can beapplied on an electronic documenteliminating physical routing therebysaves the cost, time and adds theefficiency to the entire process.DIGITAL SIGNATURE CERTIFICATEA digital certificate is the credentialsand identity of any person or authorityor an organization in electronic formand issued by a Root CA (CertificationAuthority).It is used for encrypting anddecrypting information with the helpof private and public key pairmaintained by a sophisticated andmathematically proven technologyknown as Public Key Infrastructure(PKI). Information can be decryptedonly when both a private key and apublic key match each other.eOFFICE-DIGITAL SIGNING TOOLeOffice-Digital Signing Tool is adesktop tool used for digitally signingthe electronic documents using X.509certificates, thereby integrity,authenticity and non- repudiation ofthe document is maintained. Digitallysigned documents provide required16 | informatics.nic.in | January 2013