Selling and Servicing the Digital Signature Certificates
1. What is digital signature?
Owing to IT, a lot of new terms are coming in our life. One of key terms in the
new infrastructures is “digital signature”. Applying it in order to identify and
validate documents is becoming something like a standard. Digital signature is an
electronic document’s detail intended to protect this document against forgery.
Digital signature is generated resulting from information transformation using
cryptographic information protection facilities and enables identifying the owner of
signature key certificate, as well as ascertain that there is no information distortion
in this document.
Basic terms applied when working with digital signature:
Digital signature private key refers to a sequence of digital symbols known to
registration certificate holder and intended for generation of digital signature using
digital signature facilities;
Digital signature public key means a sequence of digital symbols accessible to
any person and intended for authentication of digital signature in an electronic
document;
Public key only works in pair with private key. For public key, registration
certificate is issued which is automatically transmitted along with your message
signed digitally. You should make sure that everyone you are going to share the
signed documents with, has your public key. You may also verify the identity of
the person who has digitally signed the e-document that you receive, by viewing
his/her registration certificate. The public key duplicate is forwarded to
Certification Authority where there is the library of public keys. In CA library,
registration and reliable storage of public keys is ensured for the avoidance of
forgery or distortion attempts.
2. How to use digital signature?
Digital signature is very easy to use. No special knowledge, skills and abilities
will be required. For each user of digital signature participating in e-document
interchange, unique public and private (secret) cryptographic keys are generated.
The core element is private key which is used to encrypt e-documents and
generate digital signature. Private key is to be kept by the user; it is given to
him/her on a separate media which might be a diskette, smart card or touch
memory. It must be kept secret from other users in the network.
To authenticate a digital signature, public key is used. In Certification
Authority, duplicate of public key is stored in the library of registration certificates
for public keys. Certification Authority ensures registration and reliable storage of
public keys for the avoidance of distortion or forgery attempts.
You set your digital signature under e-document. With that, based on digital
signature private key and the document content, through cryptographic
transformation some big number is worked out, which constitutes the given user’s
digital signature under the given particular document. Into the end of e-document,
this number is added, or it is stored on a separate file. The below information is
recorded into the signature:
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Name of the public key file.
Information on the person who has generated the signature.
Date of signature generation.
User, who has received the digitally signed document and has the sender’s public
key, based on the document text and on public key performs the backward
cryptographic transformation that enables verification of the sender’s digital
signature. If the digital signature is true, it means that the document was indeed
signed by the sender, and no alterations have been made in the document’s text.
Otherwise, a message will be issued that the sender’s certificate is not valid.
3. Save your money and time.
Digital signature is an opportunity to:
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minimize the financial damage risk owing to rise of confidentiality of
document interchange and assign validity to the documents;
considerably reduce the time for document workflow during the process of
reporting and interchanging the documentation;
use one digital signature during electronic tenders, when submitting reports
to government agencies, for approving and working with financial
documents;
enhance and make cheaper the procedure for preparation, delivery, recording
and storing the documents; guarantee the documentation’s authenticity;
agree upon cross certification certificate with major foreign systems. Ensure
the possibility of using Russian digital signature for international workflow;
replace the conventional signature and seal. When generating a digital
signature, instead of typical link between seal or handwritten signature and a
sheet of paper, complicated mathematic dependence emerges between edocument, private and public keys.
Build a corporate system of document interchange.
Digital signature is an efficient solution for everyone who wants to keep pace
with new times. If you have no time to waste on waiting for guard or courier mail
at a distance of many hundreds kilometers to verify a deal or the authenticity of the
received information, then digital signature’s advantages are evident. Documents
signed with digital signature might be transmitted to the destination within a few
seconds. All parties to electronic document interchange get equal opportunities,
regardless of being remote from each other. Borders are erased in 21 century
owing to latest technologies.
Forging a digital signature is impossible: a huge quantity of computations
would be needed to do that, which cannot be fulfilled, given the up-to-date status
of computer hardware and mathematics, within reasonable period, i.e. while the
information contained in the signed document remains topical.
Additional protection against forgery is ensured by CA certifying the public
key. Furthermore, if a client wishes, CA can insure his/her digital signature.
Along with the use of digital signature, mentality is changing, and the work
scheme “develop a project electronically – create a paper copy for signature – send
a paper copy with signature – review the paper copy – migrate the copy in
electronic form into the computer” is reaching back. We will save your money and
time.
4. Where can digital signature be acquired?
To acquire digital signature, you should go to the nearest Registration Authority
under NCA of the RK.
To get a registration certificate, legal entities and individuals must submit the
documents specified in the policies for usage of registration certificates for relevant
persons (policies are available at: www.knca.kz), as well as the payment order that
confirms the payment for digital signature (details of payment), or otherwise pay
for it in cash;
You should submit all the above documents to в Registration Authority under
NCA of the RK.