Fw: APEC Report

[Steve Hanna <steve.hanna@sun.com>]

Jeremy Hilton asked me to forward this for him, since he's
having trouble sending email to the pki-tc list.

-Steve

----- Original Message -----
From: Jeremy Hilton
To: pki-tc@lists.oasis-open.org
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2003 10:52 AM
Subject: Fw: APEC Report

I thought this might interest the group.

--------

APEC has now released a report "Electronic Authentication: Issues
relating to its selection and use". It includes a Chapter on PKI
interoperability. It is available for download from
http://www.apectelwg.org/apecdata/telwg/eaTG/EA_text.pdf

Following is the Executive Summary:

In their 1998 Blueprint for Action1, APEC Ministers recognised
the enormous potential of electronic commerce to expand business
opportunities, reduce costs, increase efficiency, improve the
quality of life, and facilitate the greater participation of
small business in global commerce. A cornerstone in achieving that
potential is providing the tools that will allow parties to
transactions to know with certainty the degree of reliance
they can place on that transaction.  Electronic authentication
provides such tools through technologies that can ensure the
authenticity of transactions. Some of the technologies also
provide integrity, non-repudiation and confidentiality
functions.  Electronic authentication is a developing field.
As it evolves new technologies and new issues emerge.
Addressing these issues is a problem for both users and
government policy makers.  For this reason it was agreed at
TEL 18 that the then Public Key Authentication Task Group
address all authentication technologies. This report identifies
the major issues involved in selecting and using electronic
authentication to provide APEC member economies with guidance
when developing policy and legal frameworks to support electronic
authentication. The report addresses the issues in general,
examines five different groups of technologies, and documents
how these relate to the issues raised. It also addresses some
of the legal issues involved with the use of electronic
authentication.

Best regards

Jeremy