Digital Signatures

If you're looking for a reference on digital signatures, you'll already know that RSA Security and its staff are just about the most respected and trusted authority in that field. Author Atreya is a technical consultant with RSA, Hammond a lead developer, Paine a senior software engineer, and Starrett another software engineer. Finally, there's Wu - the only non-RSA member of the pack - who is CEO of the InfoSec Law Group and lends considerable weight to the book by offering his legal experience of digital authentication in the real world.

Everything about this book screams 'essential reading'. From the logical layout to the fact-packed content, it explains the four goals of security to get you started, provides an understandable overview of the complex matter of cryptography and reveals the role of digital signatures. It will help you to implement digital signature applications successfully and securely, and understand X.509 public key certificates and directory structures.

All the important factors are covered. There's no shying away from the most technical issues surrounding interoperability, time-stamping, credential roll-over and so on.

Being a geek at heart, I always start reading highly technical tomes from the back. The reason for my apparent madness is that I tend to judge such a book not by its cover, but by its appendices. This is all the more vital when the book is primarily a US concern and can reveal whether it's relevant to the UK reader. I was initially concerned that Digital Signatures would have a broadly US-centric focus, so I was pleased to find Appendix B covering international law developments, which focuses on the relevant European Parliament directives. In fact, the book remains firmly focused throughout on the topic in hand, making it just as essential for the UK reader.

As a single volume, it's recommended, but throw in the other available volumes covering cryptography, IPSec, PKI and security architecture and you have the essential reference library to implementing digital security in today's real world.

Author: Davey Winder