eGov-Jan-2010-[48-49]-Securing Digital Identities

tech talk

Securing Digital Identities

The use of Digital Certificate had been a successful and proven initiative by Ministry of Company Affairs i.e. MCA21.

MCA21 has changed the way citizens and companies interact with MCA now.

The companies can now interact ‘online’ with MCA instead of the ‘in-line’, with serpentine queues especially during the peak filing season (October – December every year). MCA21 has created an overall positive environment amongst stakeholders and its adoption can be gauged by MCA21 portal hits / day.

MCA21 has led to efficient delivery of services and supervision of corporate processes through the use of modern information technology i.e. usage of

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Digital certificates for digitally signing and submitting the documents online.

Now the next initiative in this field is the usage of Digital Certificates in Commercial Taxation.

Commercial taxation department has a variety of services, like e-Payments, filing e-Returns, e-Filing of declarations for inter-state goods movement, e-Communication, etc, and to make these services available to the citizens and companies online, the usage of digital certificate (as in MCA 21) is the option. benefits from e-Services Some of the benefits from e-Services will be:

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Multiple Service Delivery Channels for Taxpayers • Virtual Single Window System for Taxpayers • Increased Service time Window for dealers to 24x7 • Reduced Cost of Compliance for dealers –Time and Cost • Reduced Cost of Collection for each Rupee collected To avail these services all the citizens or the companies have to procure digital certificates for digitally signing the documents, for proving there identity online. Identities of all should be kept in a secured place to avoid any theft or fraud.

Safenet, the leader in securing digital identities through products like Safenet’s e-Token and smart cards. e-Token (known Aladdin e-Token, company now within Safenet management) is a cryptographic smart card in a USB form factor i.e. no reader required. e-Token is used to store and secure the digital identities and to provide two factor authentication. The ‘private key’ the most important part of the digital identity never leaves the cryptographic memory of the e-Token in any scenario, making the online digital signing to be performed in a secure manner. Majority of the identities in the MCA21 market has been secured

by Safenet’s e-Token.

Safenet ‘Data Secure’ for Securing UID Databases Unique Identification (UID), an initiative that will play an active role in protecting people’s identities and fighting frauds. As this is related to identities of the residents of nation, it will be very vulnerable to theft and misuse. Sensitive information about the people will be accumulated in the databases at the central level i.e. Central ID repository and at the local level i.e. registrars and enrolling agencies.

The federated databases will need a security mechanism that will ensure the confidentiality of data i.e. encryption.

As the number and severity of security breaches continues to grow, it is increasingly incumbent upon organisations to begin encrypting data inside the data centers. SafeNet offers breakthrough solutions that make it practical to encrypt critical data, and ensure it’s secured throughout an

organisation. With SafeNet DataSecure™ Platforms, organisations can ensure that they are compliant with legislative and policy mandates for security, and eliminate the risks of a breach. SafeNet DataSecure Platforms deliver comprehensive security capabilities: • Encrypt critical data in Web servers, application servers, and databases.

• Ensure all access to critical data is carefully managed, logged, and controlled.

• Administer keys and policies in a secure, centralized fashion.

• Ensure security processing is highly scalable and reliable.

• O f f l o a d s encryption from the server DataSecure works seamlessly with leading databases— including IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle— delivering capabilities

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for securely and efficiently managing encryption. DataSecure encrypts data in the database at the column level, and can be used to secure such information as credit card numbers, social security numbers, passwords, account balances, and email addresses. DataSecure significantly streamlines the administrative tasks involved in database encryption—it automates much of the configuration and implementation process and it can be deployed without any disruption to the applications tied to the database.

Data Secure is a hardened appliance and offloads the heavy encryption mechanism from the server and also secures the crypto keys inside, making it more secure and faster in performance then software based encryption.

These all functionalities are suitable for big projects like UID where there will be huge amount of sensitive data to be secured. \\

RANA GUPTA Busines Head - India & SAARC, SafeNet India Pvt. Ltd.

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january 2010

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