Post 2: the Digital Signature Act 1997

This act concerns about the secure of electronic communication especially through the internet. Digital Signature is an identity verification using encryption technique to protect against e-mail forgery. In simple, your signature and contents of the email which mostly use in automating signature-dependent processes; approval, agreement, and acceptance must encrypted during send to receive event. Of cause in order to view the encrypted email, the recipient needs to decrypt it with the given key. The Key can be either public key or private key.  

The beauty of this act is to gain confidence across businesses or organizations that needed paperless environment to process e-approval, e-agreement, e-acceptance or even not to disclose PnC (private and confidential) email as the act ensure that the email receive by the recipient is valid. Valid in the sense that the email are true from correspond person or sender.

You can refer to http://www.agc.gov.my/Akta/Vol.%2012/Act%20562.pdf for more information

How the encrypted work?

To do email encrytion, the very beginning is to make sure your email have an add-on encrytion feature.

For an email encrytion, there are 3 components which must be understand during the process

1) Public key - is a key given to everyone who want to send an email to you

2) Passphrase - Your password unlocks your private key and permits it to be used during read and unlock your public key to send and receive encrypted email.

3) Private key - is a key use to kept your secret on your computer since it is used for decryption

The key consist your name, email and password, and it is generated by the software wizard. Your public key must send to a key server so that sender can use it to send encryted email to you. When you receive an encryted email, you will be requested to key in the passphrase to decrypt that email using your private key.