Public key cryptography and digital signatures
Since the 1970s, when Public Key Cryptography first became available, its use has been growing steadily. While Public Key Cryptography can be used to cipher data so that it can't be read, by far its most important modern day use is in creating digital signatures.
Digital signatures are used extensively in electronic commerce. Like a paper signature, a digital signature can be used to prove who sent a message and (equally importantly) prevent its sender denying that they sent the message later. Unlike a paper signature though, you can also use a digital signature to detect when a document or transaction has been tampered with. The Castelain whitepaper What is PKI contains an introduction to public key cryptography and explains how digital signatures are used and created.
Use of pubic key cryptography and digital signatures has been growing steadily in recent years. Reasons for this vary, but Castelain expect growth in use of public key cryptography to continue for the foreseeable future. This growth will in part be driven by the need to defend banking and other eCommerce systems from increasingly sophisticated attacks such as the real-time man-in-the-middle attacks the Mafia used to attack Citibank.
Castelain have a wealth of experience building systems that use public key cryptography for major banking and government clients throughout the world. We work with, but do not sell for or accept commissions from, most of the major vendors. If you are having problems coming to grips with what the technology can offer and need to talk to someone unbiased and independent, you should talk to us first.
