TY  - JOUR
AB  - Purpose– Digital signatures are only enjoying a gradual and reluctant acceptance, despite the long existence of the relevant legal and technical frameworks. One of the major drawbacks of client‐generated digital signatures is the requirement for effective and secure management of the signing keys and the complexity of the cryptographic operations that must be performed by the signer. Outsourcing digital signatures to a trusted third party would be an elegant solution to the key management burden. Aims to investigate whether this is legally and technically feasible.Design/methodology/approach– In this paper's approach a relying party trusts a Signature Authority (SA) for the tokens it issues, rather than a Certification Authority for the certificates it creates in a traditional public key infrastructure scheme.Findings– The paper argues that passing the control of signature creation to a SA rather than the signer herself, is not a stronger concession than the dependence on an identity certificate issued by a Certification Authority.Originality/value– The paper proposes a framework for outsourced digital signatures.
VL  - 14
IS  - 5
SN  - 0968-5227
DO  - 10.1108/09685220610707449
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/09685220610707449
AU  - Lekkas Dimitrios
AU  - Lambrinoudakis Costas
ED  - Sokratis K Katsikas
ED  - Stefanos Gritzalis
PY  - 2006
Y1  - 2006/01/01
TI  - Outsourcing digital signatures: a solution to key management burden
T2  - Information Management & Computer Security
PB  - Emerald Group Publishing Limited
SP  - 436
EP  - 449
Y2  - 2024/05/11
ER  -