Certicom Corp, a Data security firm has developed a new method to speed up computer verification of a digital signature. “For almost a decade, mathematicians have been researching faster ways to verify the elliptic curve digital signatures algorithm,” Certicom said in a statement. “A team of researchers at Certicom has developed a new implementation for ECDSA that reduces the time needed to verify a digital signature by 40%, making it more efficient than open source and other legacy systems.”
Digital signatures are used online to prove that information has not been tampered with, and that a specific transaction or information exchange occurred. During an electronic transaction, the sender adds a unique signature and the receiver verifies the signature. “Digital signatures are incredibly important for e-commerce, e-passports, Smart Cards and many other applications – anywhere you need to provide authentication and integrity,” Certicom founder Dr. Scott Vanstone and Executive vice president.
“Consequently, this improvement to the verification process has far-reaching implications for government and the private sector.” The mathematical development reduces the verification time of a digital signature verification to 158 milliseconds from 221 milliseconds, the company said.