Problems

Due to legal uncertainties, lack of exemplary installations, and the absence of organizational and technical recommendations, many institutions are not ready to introduce digital long-term archiving at the moment.

Digital signatures offer the possibility to secure integrity and authenticity of digital data. However, up to now institutions in health care, public administration or other fields have almost no experience with a user and process oriented integration of digital signing components into any desired complex information systems which is at the same time efficient and cost-effective.

In contrast to paper based documents, the value of digitally signed documents as legal evidence decreases in the course of time. This is particularly due to the following reasons: the employed cryptographic algorithms and the keys loose their security qualification in the course of time. It also cannot be guaranteed that the directories and documents needed for the verification of certificates are available for 30 years or more. In addition, the use of digital signing procedures is often insecure and information for the subsequent evaluation of the actual security is missing. Concepts to solve these problems have only been developed to a certain extent.