This article describes why RFC3161 compliant Time Stamp Authority (TSA) servers are needed and what to look for when choosing a Timestamp Authority (TSA) server. ETSI TS 101 861 and TS 102 023 also places important requirements for TSA services providers and these are also considered in this hot topic....

Getting a document approved and signed-off is a crucial part of any business, be it an order, sales contract, claim forms, internal HR documents or any other type of document that needs to be clearly agreed and approved preferably with a clear audit trail.

In today’s economic climate the traditional ...

This article discusses the features that should be on a highly desirable feature list when looking for an OCSP Responder product. Although the main focus of this topic is technical there are of course also commercial aspects that need consideration, these are summarised briefly at the end. The technical features ...

PDF documents have been common use within business for many years. Protecting PDFs against change is fast becoming a hot topic. Digitally signing PDFs with a certifying signature protects the content and also shows who signed or approved the document. This article explains how you can easily digitally sign PDFs, ...

Within Europe a new digital signature format “PAdES” is gaining traction. PAdES stands for “PDF Advanced Electronic Signatures” and is a set of standards published by ETSI (TS 102 778 parts 1 to 5) to support European requirements for electronic signatures. The purpose is specifically for creation of long-term signatures ...

PEPPOL is a large-scale European Commission project, working on allowing any company in the EU to be able to communicate electronically with any EU governmental institution for all procurement processes. This includes both pre-award (e.g. tendering) and post-award (e.g. ordering and invoicing) processes. The results of PEPPOL are very interesting ...

It is clear that digital signatures are a very valuable security technique that enables data integrity (proving that the information has not changed since signing) and user authentication (proving who signed-off or approved the information). Digital signatures are now widely used in various industries and applications from signing of machine-readable ...