eCert: a secure and user centric edocument transmission protocol: solving the digital signing practical issues

Abstract

Whilst our paper-based records and documents are gradually being digitized, security concerns about how such electronic data is stored, transmitted, and accessed have increased rapidly. Although the traditional digital signing method can be used to provide integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation for signed eDocuments, this method does not address all requirements, such as fine-grained access control and content status validation. What is more, information owners have increasing demands regarding their rights of ownership. Therefore, a secure user-centric eDocument management system is essential. Through a case study of a secure and user-centric electronic qualification certificate (eCertificate) system, this dissertation explores the issues and the technology gaps; it identifies existing services that can be re-used and the services that require further development; it proposes a new signing method and the corresponding system framework which solves the problems identified. In addition to tests that have been carried out for the newly designed eCertificate system to be employed under the selected ePortfolio environments, the abstract protocol (named eCert protocol) has also been applied and evaluated in two other eDocument transmitting situations, Mobile eID and eHealthcare patient data. Preliminary results indicate that the recommendation from this research meets the design requirements, and could form the foundation of future eDocument transmitting research and development.

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