Trust is one of the most difficult things to gain. Once someone has lost his or her trust in you, it will be incredibly hard to regain it. However, trust is the much needed component when it comes to e-government and conducting business on the Internet.
How does one build a secure and trusted environment? This can be done by acquiring and implementing the proper mechanisms so that online trust can be created and transferred from one entity to another.
A trusted environment is characterised by:
- The fact that all entities are uniquely identifiable;
- That there is a minimum number of prior trusted entities; and
- That these entities have unquestionable trust to other participating entities.
There are basically two types of trust models being used in the world today: Peer-to-peer, and hierarchical. In the peer-to-peer model, also known as the web-of-trust model, users manage the trust themselves whereby they are the ones who decide who can and cannot be trusted.
While this model is effective in managing e-mail and keeping out unwanted and unsolicited mail, it is not as effective when it comes to e-government and e-business where it faces scalability limitations.
In the hierarchical model, trust is managed by Certificate Authorities (CAs). This model uses identification, authentication, accountability, integrity, authorisation, non-repudiation and availability to verify trust.
The digital certificates issued by recognised CAs serve as trustworthy objects that represent trusted digital identities. This is where digital identity management comes in.
With proper digital identity management, a company can automate their business processes and establish online relationships with customers and partner companies. Identity management also allows users different levels of access to a company's services.
Earning trust
Making security and trust a priority is iVEST's key concern. iVEST stands for "Virtual Environment for Secure Transactions". The prefix "i" represents information or the Internet. It can also mean "I" as in the first person reference to convey the personal touch in iVEST technology.
iVEST is an Internet security solution based on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) — the adopted international standard for secure online transactions and communications. It ensures privacy and security through three key features:
- Strong user identity;
- World class encryption, with 128-bit for symmetric algorithm and 1,024-bit for asymmetric algorithm, that safeguards privacy; and
- Digital signatures which can be legally enforceable
iVEST can be used to identify the person (via a secure token), communicate privately (using encryption), and provide eyewitness for the capture of signatures on application forms for subsequent processing (using digital signatures).
iVEST's enterprise modules provide trusted enterprise identities that can be used to automate business transactions. What this means is that a company using these modules can authorise selected employees to use the company identity to conduct transactions on its behalf.
What are the benefits of using iVEST?
The iVEST Secure Transactions Platform can connect and talk to various communities including iVEST corporate, e-government and MyKad PKI. This is all done seamlessly and on a secure platform. Its modules are customisable to suit the needs of each company. In addtion, the iVEST server and client-side products are Java-based. This makes it easy to integrate iVEST's Secure Transactions Platform into most applications. This also reduces time to market for the company's services.
iVEST's suite of client and server tools support easy-to-use and secure tokens such as the smartcard and USB tokens for a variety of workstations, network and business applications. iVEST also verifies message integrity by indicating if a message has been tampered with and requires only one client software for all iVEST-enabled applications.
What greater endorsement can there be than to have iVEST software modules used by the Malaysian Government in the MyKad national identification card.
Quelle/Source: Computerworld Malaysia, July 2006
