What is Digital Signature Certificate and How to Obtain it?

Digital Signature differs from electronic signature as it is cryptographically devised. It uses a cryptographical mechanism to encrypt documents and messages such that if it is manipulated on the way the manipulation is discovered and found out. There is an algorithmic method that works for encrypting documents  

This is known as the key pair mechanism that creates a private key and a public key the public key is meant to decrypt documents.

Hash Technology

Hashing is a process that uses cryptological mechanisms to encrypt electronic documents and messages using algorithms. The hash algorithms transfer a given key or string of characters to another value. A hash function is a computational value that can map any date into a hash value of a fixed size.

The data is passed through a formula in application software that encrypts a document. The data may be of any size, the hash algorithms convert it into a string of 32 unreadable characters. Thus, every time you run a formula it returns the same value. If the document is manipulated the hash value will change and this is a security feature that detects manipulation for the new hash will not match with the original one. The digital signatures are primarily meant to authenticate the document and when it is certified by the CA it identifies the sender. This works fine on electronic passages where the identity of the sender is not known.

For example, some of the hash algorithms used are:

• MD 5
• SHA 1
• SHA 224
• SHA 256

For this digital cryptographical mechanism to work. The sender decrypts the document or the message using the application. The mechanism is known as the key pair mechanism. When the sender encrypts a private key and a public key is generated. The private key as the name suggests is kept a secret and the public key is used to decrypt the document for authenticating purposes the encrypted hashed document is sent along with the certificate.

The certificate is issued by the CA which is the digital signature certificate provider in India. The CA is authorized by the CCA or controller of certifying authority authorized by the MCA under the Information Technology Act 2006.   

            

Digital Signature Certificate certifies digital signatures. It is