A Digital Signature Certificate authenticates your identity electronically. It also provides you with a high level of security for your online transactions by ensuring absolute privacy of the information exchanged using a Digital Signature Certificate.
A licensed Certifying Authority (CA) issues the digital signature. Certifying Authority (CA) means a person who has been granted a license to issue a digital signature certificate under Section 24 of the Indian IT-Act 2000.
A Digital Signature Certificate is a secure digital key that is issued by the certifying authorities for the purpose of validating and certifying the identity of the person holding this certificate. Digital Signatures make use of the public key encryptions to create the signatures.
A Digital signature is an electronic form of a signature that can be used to authenticate the identity of the sender of a message or the signer of a document, and also ensure that the original content of the message or document that has been sent is unchanged. Digital signatures are easily transportable and cannot be imitated by someone else. The ability to ensure that the original signed message arrived means that the sender cannot easily disclaim it later.
For sending and receiving digitally signed and encrypted emails.
For carrying out secure web-based transactions, or to identify other participants of web-based transactions.
In eTendering, procurement, MCA [for Registrar of Companies efiling], Income Tax [for efiling income tax returns] Applications and also in many other applications.
For signing documents like MSWord, MSExcel and PDFs.
Plays a pivotal role in creating a paperless office.
Physical documents are signed manually, similarly, electronic documents, for example e-forms are required to be signed digitally using a Digital Signature Certificate.
The Certifying Authorities are authorized to issue a Digital Signature Certificate with a validity of one or two years.
Digital Signatures are legally admissible in a Court of Law, as provided under the provisions of IT Act, 2000