nic signature is the electronic equivalent of a manual signature placed over a document; therefore the legal framework must be equal to hand-written signature laws. The electronic signature provides trust and security in e-commerce, in electronic data interchange and in the open network as a whole. It allows any recipient of an electronic data to define the sender and to check whether the data has been changed, or whether its integrity has been violated. In contrast to the scanned hand-written signature, the electronic one is a piece of information in an electronic form, where electronic value is used for identifying the author and its consent with the data. The electronic signature is based on a technology for authentication (systems for encoding and decoding.) Over the past few years, changes in law and advances in technology have dramatically altered the landscape of electronic authentication. Although use of the technology is not yet widespread, electronic authentication holds the promise of a radical shift in the way business is conducted. Digital signatures and the operation of public key infrastructures (“PKIs”) promise drastically reduced transaction costs in virtually every sector of business. Companies and consumers alike welcome the day when the click of a button can complete high-value transactions that previously required hours of deliberation and hundreds of documents. While the benefits of authentication technologies have long been apparent, the method of achieving these commercial gains has been decidedly less obvious. Legislatures and regulatory agencies around the world have taken various and divergent approaches in their effort to take advantage of these emerging technologies. Much of this divergence stems from the simple fact that these technologies have yet to fully evolve. Electronic signatures currently claim only limited acceptance in the marketplace; thus, policy-makers are left with the ...
