The Chambers of Commerce of Ireland are now established as a Trusted Third Party in the area of e-commerce. Through ChamberCert, a public Certification Authority, we are enabling small and medium sized firms, to engage in secure and authenticated e-commerce transactions. As more and more business processes are transferred to the Internet the need for trust will become more critical and it is only by providing that trust will the potential of e-commerce for growth and development be realised. An impediment to the development of e-commerce is the perceived lack of security of Internet transactions and as in all commercial transactions trust is an essential element. This applies even more so e-commerce were the normal reassurances of the physical trading environment do not exist.
Symmetric encryption ensures confidential, private and secure transactions.
Public and Private keys allow authentication, identification, integrity of data and non-repudiation. The private key allow users to attach a digital signature to a message and thus uniquely identifies the sender. However the utility of the digital signature as an authenticating tool is limited by the ability of the recipient to ensure the authenticity of the key used to verify the signature. An independent third party therefore is necessary to guarantee that the public key does actually belong to the person that signed the message using their private key. A trusted third party is therefore required to ensure the principles of secure e-commerce.