An X.509 Based Licensed Digital Signature Framework for Hierarchical Organizations

Abstract

Digital signatures are used for integrity of the signed media and authentication of the signers in digital environment. Beyond these the signature might provide an authorization service for a verifier to check whether the signer has license to sign the document in workflow. This verification is important in case of exchanging valuable documents between different organizational levels and also crucial in digital document archive. In this work, the necessity of signature authorization was described and also implementation of the authorization with X.509 based templates in hierarchical organizations was expressed. Also, a license structure for digital signature and a framework where signatures realize authorization of the signers on a document in hierarchical organization structure were proposed. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010.