Digital Signatures: The Cyber Security Certification

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

By Lee Shafrir

Certified digital signatures are smart digital identities. This means an individual was personally certified by an authorized element and issued a personal/enterprise digital signature that cannot be forged, cannot be denied and meets all the legal requirements. The modern technological world needs it for almost all forms of contact between supplier and customer, service agreements, commitments and more.

This issue is of the utmost importance, despite gaining in importance only recently. The digital signature has entered our lives and became a part of every business move, organization and commercial sector – in addition to our own personal lives. Only recently we’ve heard about a company who charged private individuals for a service they allegedly got, despite having no evidence and no legal digital signature.

The massive spread of digital signatures into organizations, to the benefit of all those concerned, wasn’t brought on only by legal requirements. It’s the need to improve cyber security, the rising difficulty of blocking constantly improving cyber attacks, preventing document forgery, maintaining privacy, increasing the efficiency of organizational processes and saving money and resources.

All these raised public awareness to digital signatures, which are considered beneficial for cyber security and privacy.

This is how it works, in Israel and in the rest of the world.

Digital signatures, becoming more and more common in the western world – including Israel – are modified according to the needs of every country and receive authorization from each country’s relevant government office (in Israel it’s the Ministry of Justice). The same organizations, with state approval, issue digital signature certifications on a case-by-case basis, including cross-referencing data with government databases.

In the U.S. the process is slightly different. There every digital signature receives legal certification. The issue is problematic and the very significant security aspect is neglected by most states. In some states, however, regulations are changing and adopting an outlook similar to that of the European directive, a recognition of the fact that a PKI mechanism provides a high level of security.

How is international trade affected?

There are several international certification organizations that have been acknowledged as such by international companies, Adobe, Microsoft and Google, for example. These companies are known as internationally trusted root channels, using legally certified digital signatures. They are issued by certifying organizations in order to conduct secure international trade. It should be noted that the digital signature carries the highest security levels and that the documents are legally signed and valid for trade between different countries, facilitating quick, reliable, precise and secure international trade.

iHLS – Israel Homeland Security

A secure digital invoice that cannot be hacked or forged

One of the most neglected fields for security in Israel and abroad is the organization’s digital invoice. Many organizations adopted digital invoices in order to send invoices by e-mail that are equivalent to original documents, saving costs on printing.

Experience teaches us that this is only the beginning – many still don’t bother to check whether the digital signature meets legal security requirements. Even when a signature is secure there are additional considerations: Does it provide increased security? Is the identity of the signatory known and verified by a certification service? Is the invoice signature real or forged?

Other projects that require increased security through certified digital signatures

The level of security in various banking projects can be improved using different applications, for desktop computers or smart mobile devices, enabling more secure money transfers and transactions.

Health services use signatures to sign medical documents, preventing prescription fraud and the need to visit the doctor to receive a prescription. The medicines are collected directly from the pharmacy, with the pharmacist identifying the certified digital signature on the document received on his system.

Scanned accounting documents are also validated, as original documents that cannot be forged, when signed by two authorized members of the organization.

New, advanced mobile digital signature application

A newly introduced application – legally certified digital signature using mobile devices and tablets. This is not a simple prospect, requiring unique developments and high standards.

Recently an application of this sort was launched by various service centers, such as car rentals, telecom and retail stores, where clients are required to sign a large number of documents. This means all these documents are secure, the signature is real and cannot be denied later.

Millions of users around the world are already using digital signatures, that continue to develop in many varied directions. They exist in many sectors and their importance is constantly rising with respect to security, even if this requires modifications in accordance to various standards and regulations. Organizations realize how important signatures are and use them, making the organization secure, advanced, efficient and green.

The writer is the marketing VP for ComSign, a part of the Comda group, the leading certification organization in Israel issuing secure digital signatures.