The Nebraska Digital Signatures Act and Regulations give the Secretary of State authority to approve certification authorities. Certification authorities, the companies that provide digital signatures, are approved by the state to ensure that proper standards and procedures are followed when issuing the digital certificate that the signer uses to electronically sign documents. Scott Moore s approval of VeriSign, Inc. as the State of Nebraska's first approved certification authority will allow the use of a technology known as public key encryption to sign and transmit legally binding, digitally signed documents electronically. With the approval of VeriSign as a certification authority, Nebraska joins a handful of states such as Utah, California, Minnesota and Washington which give broad based legal recognition to public key encryption as a legally valid means of signing documents.
Certification authorities issue digital certificates, a software encryption or encoding program.
The encryption program, unique to the signer, and known only to the signer and the certification authority, identifies the document as being sent by the signer and protects the document from being altered in transmission. With the Secretary of State s approval of VeriSign, Inc., the ability to sign and transmit legally binding documents electronically is available immediately.