March 29, 2024

Awareness on digital signatures

TAP | Updated: May 30, 2018

 

ITANAGAR, May 30: Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), under the aegis of Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA), in association with the State’s Department of Information Technology and Communications organised a one-day awareness programme on digital signatures and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) here on Wednesday.

The programme was inaugurated by CCA Junu Rani Das Kailay in presence of Harshprabha Aggarwal, Scientist ‘G’ of CCA, Dr. Kumari Roshni VS, Senior Director of CDAC, Neelam Yapin Tana, State IT Director and officials from CDAC and State government.

The CDAC officials explained the importance of understanding technology behind digital signatures and PKI, which will contribute towards the growth of Digital Arunachal Pradesh and Digital India as a whole.

“As our lives are migrating towards a Digital era and as paper become a redundant instrument, it is important that the key electronic services and transactions should be able to guarantee the same trust in the digital form that is well achieved through the adoption of digital signature and PKI,” Das Kailay said

Currently, many applications or forms submitted by a citizen require his or her physical signature. A digital signature takes the concept of traditional paper-based signing and turns it into an electronic "fingerprint." This "fingerprint," or coded message, is unique to both the document and the signer and binds them together.

In short, a digital signature has the same function as that of a handwritten signature. Some of the salient features of digital signature are non-repudiation, integrity and authenticity. The Information Technology Act 2000 provides the required legal sanctity to digital signatures based on asymmetric crypto systems.

A PKI is a set of roles, policies, and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store, and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption. The purpose of a PKI is to facilitate the secure electronic transfer of information for a range of network activities such as e-commerce, internet banking and confidential email. It is required for activities where simple passwords are an inadequate authentication method and more rigorous proof is required to confirm the identity of the parties involved in the communication and to validate the information being transferred.

The participants expressed happiness over being a part of the awareness programme and were ready to implement the knowledge gained, in their organisations. DIPRO

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