What is Digital Signature?
A digital signature, which is a sort of electronic signature, is a mathematical procedure that is commonly used to confirm the validity and integrity of a message (e.g., an email, a credit card transaction, or a digital document). Digital signatures generate a unique virtual fingerprint for a person or entity and are used to identify users and protect information in digital messages or documents. In emails, the email content itself becomes part of the digital signature. Digital signatures are far safer than other types of electronic signatures.
Understanding Digital Signature
The use of Digital Signature Certificates has sped up the verification procedure for many key documents and sped up online transactions. A DSC contains the certificate holder’s name, an expiration date, a unique serial number, a copy of the certificate holder’s public key (used for message encryption), and the certificate-issuing authority’s digital signature (which helps the recipient verify the authenticity of the certificate).
A DSC is digitally signed by a root certificate issued by a trustworthy certificate authority to ensure its legitimacy. Different operating systems and browsers keep a list of trustworthy CA root certificates on hand so that digital certificates can be easily verified. In fact, digital certificates can be self-signed when a public key infrastructure (PKI) is established internally.
A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a collection of public encryption keys that allows people and computers to securely communicate data over the internet while also verifying the other party’s identity. PKI is used to secure any type of sensitive data transferred over the internet.
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