November 28, 2009

nonrepudiation

Last modified: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 

In reference to digital security, nonrepudiation means to ensure that a transferred message has been sent and received by the parties claiming to have sent and received the message. Nonrepudiation is a way to guarantee that the sender of a message cannot later deny having sent the message and that the recipient cannot deny having received the message.

Nonrepudiation can be obtained through the use of:

  • digital signatures -- function as a unique identifier for an individual, much like a written signature.
  • confirmation services -- the message transfer agent can create digital receipts to indicated that messages were sent and/or received.
  • timestamps -- timestamps contain the date and time a document was composed and proves that a document existed at a certain time.
 
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