Academic Computing Committee
Digital Signature Project
November 12, 2015
Frances Clerk
The Digital Signature project was brought to the ACC by Bo Bodenheimer on
October 3, 2015 ACC meeting. It has been discussed in the past at UNCG and at the
ACC in regards to specific Adobe software.
Digital Signature schemes are cryptographically based using a PKI infrastructure.
Usually a message is both signed (verifying the sender is in fact who she says she is)
and encrypted (readable only by the person able to decrypt the message).
Desired Features of a Digital Signature Project
 System should not be tied to a particular operating system (should work with
Mac, Windows, Linux)
 System should not be tied to a particular vendor and thus, only be able to
encrypt MS Office documents, for example. One should be able to sign and
encrypt any type of file (plain text, PDF, jpg, docx etc.)
 Be able to sign and encrypt email - allowing people to send student grades
and tests by email, for example.
 Ideally would work on mobile devices.
 Should be convenient to use – if not people will “resend the document
unencrypted” in cases where recipient was unable to view it.
Standards
Could standards be used such that people and units across the university who are
already using public/private key encryption can continue to use the system they
have. This is also important for communicating with people outside the university.