1)Expiry: Digital signatures, like all technological products, are highly depend

Question

1)Expiry: Digital signatures, like all technological products, are highly dependent on the technology it is based on. In this era of fast technological advancements, many of these tech products have a short shelf life.These have a short life.

2)Certificates: In order to effectively use digital signatures, both senders and recipients may have to buy digital certificates at a cost from trusted certification authorities.

3)Software: To work with digital certificates, senders and recipients have to buy verification software at a cost.This can be expensive

4)Law: In some states and countries, laws regarding cyber and technology-based issues are weak or even non-existent. Trading in such jurisdictions becomes very risky for those who use digitally signed electronic documents.

5)Compatibility: There are many different digital signature standards and most of them are incompatible with each other and this complicates the sharing of digitally signed documents.

6)The disadvantages of Digital Signature include security concerns, technological compatibility issues

Explanation / Answer

Hello,

Please find below my comments

The Points you mentioned in the question all are disadvantages of the digital Signature

1.Expiry- Digital signature certificates have an explicit start date and an explicit expiration date. Most applications check the validity period of a certificate when the digital certificate is used. The signature certificate expiration date is also used for managing the certificate revocation list (CRL). A certificate is removed from the revocation list when its natural expiration date arrives. As such, generally the shorter the certificate validity period, the shorter the CRL.

2.Certificates- While the idea of digital certificates is to block outsiders from intercepting your messages, the system is not an infallible one. In 2011, for example, a Dutch digital certificate authority called DigiNotar was compromised by hackers. Since certificate authorities are the ones in charge of issuing digital certificates (think of them as the digital version of a passport office), hackers often target these authorities in order to manipulate certificate information. As a result, when a certificate authority is compromised, hackers can create websites or send emails that look genuine and pass certification tests, but are actually fraudulent.

Digital certificate authorities consistently update their software to make sure that security threats like this are kept to a minimum, but security threats are still a concern. In 2013, Forbes noted that digital certificates had become a prime target for hackers and other cybercriminals, given that the information they protect so valuable. The software requires constant vigilance to protect users from cybercrime.

It Requires a public-key infrastructure (PKI). This can increase the cost of initial deployment in some environments when compared to public-key authentication.

3.Software-

Every software has cons, but most of the time the positives outweigh the negatives. Here are the cons of digital signature tools.

4.Law -

A digital foundation of trust

Digital signatures are nothing but a cryptographic (encrypted) signature assurance scheme that lets both parties (sender and receiver) trust an electronic document and treat it as valid and tamper-proof as long as the said document stays in an electronic format.

To get technical, according to ISO/IEC 7498-2, a digital signature is defined as “data appended to, or a cryptographic transformation of a data unit, that allows the recipient of a data unit to prove the source and integrity of the data unit and protect against forgery.”

For individuals

A digital signature involves two components-the public key and the private key. The sender signs a document using his private key that ensures the documents safety in transit as the text is encrypted and only the sender has access to his private key. Therefore, by signing a document with it, he authenticates that it has originated with him and not been tampered with en route. The recipient of this document uses the senders public key to authenticate the encrypted document and to decrypt it into a readable text format.

There are several ways to authenticate a person or the information on a computer. Some of them are password, checksum, CRC (cyclic redundancy check), private key encryption, public key encryption and digital certificate.

5.Compatibility-  Though the use of Digital Signatures is very powerful way to secure and authenticate a message or document, its advantages are hampered by lost or theft of keys and the use of vulnerable storage facilities. Furthermore, a number of Digital Signature standard exist which are incompatible with each other and there is a strong need of a standard through which these they can interact. Also the use of Digital Signature required additional money to be spent by the business in order to obtain Digital Signature services. This includes paying for the issuance of a Digital Signature as well as for the software that will be used to generate the Digital Signature

Thanks,

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