Building Trust and Confidence in Electronic Commerce:

Book excerpt: This paper relates to the part of Canada's electronic commerce strategy that has identified the need to build trust & confidence in the global digital economy. It describes electronic authentication & certification services and provides some background on the existing framework related to cryptography policy and to electronic commerce services. The paper identifies the need to provide a co-ordinated approach to establish a framework for these services, taking into account international aspects. An important focus of the paper is on the issues associated with digital signatures in view of the predominant role played by public key cryptography in the emerging environment of electronic transactions. An approach for establishing the principles of authentication & certification services is proposed, and opportunities & challenges involved in promoting the development of an authentication services market are discussed. Appendices include a proposed framework for discussion of accreditation models.