Concept

Digital Postmarks

Summary
A Digital Postmark (DPM) is a technology that applies a trusted time stamp issued by a postal operator to an electronic document, validates electronic signatures, and stores and archives all non-repudiation data needed to support a potential court challenge. It guarantees the certainty of date and time of the postmarking. This global standard was renamed the Electronic Postal Certification Mark (EPCM) in 2007 shortly after a new iteration of the technology was developed by Microsoft and Poste Italiane. The key addition to the traditional postmarking technology was integrity of the electronically postmarked item, meaning any kind of falsification and tampering will be easily and definitely detected. Additionally, content confidentiality is guaranteed since document certification is carried out without access or reading by the postal operator. The EPCM will eventually be available through the UPU to all international postal operators in the 191 member countries willing to be compliant with this standard, thus granting interoperability in certified communications between postal operators. In the United States, the US Postal Service operates a non-global standard called the Electronic Postmark, although it is soon expected to provide services utilizing the EPCM. In the United States, until the end of 2010, Authentidate was the only authorized USPS EPM provider. However, this contract was allowed to expire. An electronic document is created Digital Postmarking client software signs the document locally The signed document is sent to the Digital Postmarking (DPM) service for postmarking Upon receipt, the DPM service first validates the authenticity of the signature If the signature is valid then a timestamp is generated by the DPM service as a counter-signature that includes the date and time The document, signature, validation results and timestamp are stored in the Digital Postmark non-repudiation database A Digital Postmark Receipt, including the validation results and the timestamp, is returned to the client software The client software wraps the original document with the DPM receipt To verify the signature, local cryptographic verification can do a quick check of integrity or the full receipt or even the original document can be retrieved from the DPM service using the XML Verify request by other parties at a later date and compared with the receipt stored with the document.
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