How Digital Signatures Work?

By Author: Mark Taylor
Total Articles: 42
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Today every organization heavily relies on the digital transactions or digital documentation of the contents. Though it has reduced the organizational costs to a great extent but the chances of forgery and tampering with the documents have also arisen with it. Considering the confidentiality of the transactions safeguarding the business has become essential. So, one can employ the digital signatures to prevent fraudulent activities.

What is a digital signature?

The common answer to this question is that it is a tool to secure the digital documents from going into the wrong hands. Basically it is a way to develop the authenticity of the electronic document. It means that the recipient must be aware of the creator of the document. It restricts the scope of altering the document by any means. These digital signature only rely on a specific encryption process which helps in maintaining the accuracy of the data. The process involves the encoded data transfer to another computer. The ways used to authenticate the information or person on computer includes:

Public-key encryption: ...
... One computer passes on this key to the other trusted computer to communicate with it securely. The key is used to decode the encrypted message sent by the actual owner of the information. So only the recipient of the digital signature can read the encoded message. The key is used in succession with the individual's private key to decode the received data. So any outsider cannot access the original information contained by the file at any cost.

Private-key encryption: The private key is used by the creator of the digital document to encrypt the information before sending to another computer over the internet. Both the sender and the receiver must have the access to the private key in order to encode or decode the information. It works just like a secret code between two friends which they use to hide the information from others. Thus coded message cannot be read by any other person and the message remains secure.

Digital certificates: The digital certificates are used to implement the public-key encryption on the large scale. The certificate authority issues the certificate to the genuine source and thus establishes its ownership on the digitally certified content. The authority works just like a middleman between the two parties to establish trust. After certifying the content and its source they provide the keys to both the parties so that they can decode the message.

All these ways help in establishing the identity of the person and the content over the internet. Esign creates a numerical value or hash based on files content. Then that value using the above mentioned means is encrypted. The attached computed value Esign guides the person about the contents originality. Only the holder of the key can decrypt the value and read the hidden content. So, one can use this highly technological method to pass on the information to the other source over the net without worrying about any alteration with its content.

About: - Authentication process with digital signature verifies that it is coming from a trusted source. Both these processes work together to establish the accuracy of the data.