Introduction to Cryptolog Unicity
Cryptolog Unicity, a certificate and key storage system for your Digital Identity Management System (DIMS), solves many of the problems that have come to be associated with deploying a DIMS: the cost and complexity of deployment, the difficulties involved in certificate management and a lack of support for certain platforms.
Dealing with the complexity of DIMS deployments
Deploying a large-scale Digital Identity Management System is not a task to be undertaken lightly. Not only are there many legal and business process issues that need to be taken into consideration, but traditional DIMS infrastructures can be costly and complex to deploy and maintain.
One major issue that needs to be addressed when deploying a DIMS is the question of how private keys and digital certificates are stored and managed. Most storage systems on the market currently do this in one of two ways:
- The private keys and digital certificates are stored on the local device, for instance on the PC's hard drive.
- The private keys and digital certificates are stored on an external, secure device like a smart card or USB token.
While the first method is cheaper, it is not very flexible -- users are tied to a single machine -- and it is very insecure, with a real risk of loss or theft. Using external devices is a more secure option, but such a system can prove expensive and complex to set up, not least because of the physical cost involved in producing and distributing the smart cards themselves.
Cryptolog Unicity offers a third alternative, providing a system that allows users to activate a virtual smart card from any Internet-connected device -- a flexible solution that reduces costs while still providing a high level of security.
There are two different versions of Unicity : Unicity Local where private keys are downloaded onto the user's desktop and Unicity Remote where keys remain stored on a server and are remotely used by the user. Cryptolog can assist you determine which version suits your specific needs better.
Key benefits of Cryptolog Unicity
With Cryptolog Unicity, you can:
- Authenticate and certify transactions, and make them non-repudiable: Unicity lets your organization give each of your employees or clients a unique digital identity, enabling them to authenticate themselves or digitally sign transactions and make them legally non-repudiable.
- Encrypt and sign emails, giving them a legal value: Without requiring you to make any changes to your existing email infrastructure, Unicity makes it possible for your employees, clients and partners to encrypt and digitally sign all their emails. As well as making communications more secure, this also gives these emails a legal value -- in law, appropriately-validated digital signatures are considered to have the same value as hand-written signatures.
These actions can all be carried out from any device, including PDAs and Java-enabled mobile phones. Users are no longer tied to a single machine.
Cryptolog Unicity is a software-only client-side solution. Since no hardware needs to be installed on the user's machine, deployment costs are considerably reduced.