Hoping that two providers are better than one, PKI vendors are pairing up with Internet domain registration providers to supply digital certificates to small businesses. PKI systems employ a method of encoding information by one party and sending it to another for decoding. These systems use a certificate authority to create a pair of cryptographic keys, one private and one public, for encrypting and decrypting a transmission. The certificate authority creates digital certificates that are attached to a document to validate the parties' identities by linking an individual or an organization to a specific public key. Security providers expect the eSign law, which states that electronic signatures carry the same legal weight as written signatures, to drive more businesses to rely on the Internet to carry critical financial and sensitive transmissions that require a high level of security.
Analysts agree that the market is poised for major growth over the next several years.
That said, most analysts retain a healthy dose of skepticism. The law, which was purposefully written to be technically neutral, leaves open the possibility of contested arguments against the legality of a digital signature. Because the law is still so new, it has yet to be tested. It's not the same as with a credit card, for instance, which is protected by the bank, Schacter says. If a consumer's credit card is stolen, there is a built-in protection against liabilities incurred from charges made by anyone other than the signer on the card.