Digital signatures

Many traditional and newer businesses and applications have recently been carrying out enormous amounts of electronic transactions, which have led to a critical need for protecting the information from being maliciously altered, for ensuring the authenticity, and for supporting nonrepudiation. Just as signatures facilitate validation and verification of the authenticity of paper documents, digital signatures serve the purpose of validation and authentication of electronic documents. This technology is rather new and emerging and is expected to experience growth and widespread use in the coming years.