Making Digital Signatures Work across National Borders

Requirements for use of advanced electronic (i.e. digital) signatures are increasingly being raised. Today, the market for PKI-based electronic IDs (eID) is almost exclusively national, leaving international interoperability as a major issue. The main problem is not technical validation of eIDs and signatures, but rather how to assess and manage the risk related to their acceptance. This paper introduces a Validation Authority (VA) as a new, trusted role, providing the receiver of a digitally signed document with a single trust anchor. The VA provides one agreement and thus one liable party for validation of signatures, a single point of integration, and quality assessment of eIDs and signatures. Thus, the receiver is able to accept any digital signature with an assessed risk.