Dated November 22, 1999
Indian Express, Pune

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a research body under the Department of Information Technology, has decided to put in a formal application for being recognized as a Certification Authority (CA), once the cyberlaws are passed.

The draft cyberlaws, which allows for private parties to become certification authorities and for their regulation by a controller appointed by the central government, will be taken up in the winter session of Parliament. Currently, there are no certification authorities based in India.

"We are ideally positioned to become a certification authority. C-DAC is very much interested in it... it also has a lot of revenue earning potential," said Executive Director R.K. Arora. The organization, which is known for its PARAM series of supercomputers, has now started work on cryptography and virtual private network keys with this in mind.

The six-month-old project aims to develop a cryptography key indigenously which can be used for validating eCommerce transactions under the new framework of cyberlaws. Though the algorithm for the key will be developed in-house, it will adhere to international standards like length and other parameters,for interoperability in different environments, Arora said.

Certification authorities are crucial to transactions over the net. They act as a trusted third party to vouch for the sender's identity by issuing digital certificates which contain relevant subscriber information. The three aspects to any transaction are: sender authenticity, message integrity, and the ability to prove it in court.