Benefits of a Digital Signature Certificate

• DSC stands for Digital Signature Certificate. It's the digital equivalent of a physical or a paper document
• For example, driver's license, passport, and membership cards. This certificate acts as a symbol of identity of a private for a selected purpose, e.g., a driver's license identifies an individual who can legally drive the vehicle during a particular country specified in the license.
• Furthermore, a digital signature is presented electronically to prove one's identity, to access information on the internet and to sign a document digitally.
• A digital signature certificate contains information about the user's name, pin code, country, email address, date of issuance, the expiry date of the certificate, and name of the issuing authority.
• It's a secure digital key which is issued by the certifying authorities to validate and certify the identity of an individual holding this certificate.
• Digital signatures are created by using public-key encryption.

Authentication

• It is often used to authenticate the private information and details of an individual while doing business online.

Reduced cost and time

• You'll digitally sign a PDF file and send it to the receiver quickly, rather than signing a tough copy of a document and scanning it to send by email. Furthermore, the digital signature certificate holder isn't required to present physically to authorize a business.

Data integrity

• The digitally signed documents can't be altered or edited; therefore the date remains safe and secure.

Types/Classes of DSC

• Digital Signature Certificates are issued by a licensed Certifying Authority (CA) who has the license to issue a digital signature certificate under section 24 of the Indian IT-Act 2000.
• Counting on the purpose or need that DSC is required, it is of the following three types:

Class 1 Certificate

• This certificate confirms that the information within the application provided by the subscriber matches with the information stored in the consumer database. For example, once you log in to your social media account, your id and password are verified if they match you'll log in.

Class 2 Certificate

• This certificate also verifies an individual against a trusted, pre-verified database.
• This certificate has relevancy to situations where the risks and consequences of data compromise are moderate.
• For example, during transactions which will have substantial price or risk of fraud, or include access to non-public information. This kind of certificate is usually issued to the director and signatory authorities of a company or a company.
• It's mandatory once you got to signature documents while filing of return with the ROC.

Class 3 Certificate

• This is often the very best level certificate and to get it the person must present himself ahead of a Registration Authority (RA) and prove his/her identity only then it's issued.
• These certificates are used in online participation/bidding in e-auctions, online tenders, etc. So, the vendors who participate in online tenders must have a category 3 certificate.
• These are required where the results of the failure of security services are high.