Towards concrete application of electronic signature

Even though the theory behind digital signatures is fully understood and the related cryptographic methods have proved the efficiency in deploying security services, concrete application of digital signature to real electronic documents is still hindered by the lack of standards. In particular, we lack standards for the format of the data to be signed, the format of the signature itself and the format of the electronic documents. This has led to the appearance of proprietary solutions and incompatible adhoc software applications, with dramatic effects on deployment in real business environments. Several ad-hoc solutions for digitally signing documents are available, but they don’t ensure the compatibility with other formats and the validity of the signature over long periods. This paper introduces the proposed European standard for long-term electronic signatures and describes ongoing work towards a generalised architecture for the development of electronic signature applications. As a case study, the architecture of a system for management of electronically signed documents is described.