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With the rapid advances in information and communication technologies, more and more business records are stored and transmitted electronically. Such advancement has greatly reduced the need for storing documents in paper form, cutting costs and making business transactions much more efficient. However, it has also become more of a challenge to preserve and demonstrate the authenticity and integrity of records for which there is now no paper “orginal”.
ProofSpace provides businesses with innovative solutions to prove the integrity of their electronic records. To meet the demands of different organizations and computing environments, ProofSpace delivers a variety of customized data integrity applications, the basic building block of which is company’s cornerstone technology, the ProofMark™ System. The purpose of this whitepaper is to provide a technical overview of the ProofMark System, including core constructs, system architecture, and functional processes.
In a nutshell, the ProofMark System enables the creation of a “ProofMark”, a digital tamper-detection seal and trusted timestamp that can be applied to any electronic record. The ProofMark cryptographically binds the data with an ANSI ASC X9.95 standard trusted timestamp and can irrefutably prove that the data content has not been tampered with since the ProofMark was issued. The ProofMark System as a whole is composed of functional processes for issuing, preserving and validating ProofMarks. These processes are built upon a system architecture consisting of ProofMark servers, ProofMark clients and ProofMark forensic repositories, where all issued ProofMarks are securely indexed and preserved. In addition, trusted times are provided by an authentic time authority, and the overall system operations are further enhanced by well-established cryptographic techniques (such as RSA public-key cryptography and secure hashing algorithms) and distributed networking techniques that provide for “widely-witnessed” transactions.
At the heart of the ProofMark System is ProofSpace’s patented transient key technology. Building upon widely deployed and trusted digital signature mechanisms, the primary advantage of the transient key technology is the elimination of the administrative overhead and security risks associated with a private signing key in the conventional X.509 digital signature applications. In particular, the private signing key in the ProofMark system is bound to a brief time interval and destroyed at the end of the time interval. This short-lived nature of the private key dramatically reduces the overall risk profile of the ProofMark System when compared to competing approaches.
The ProofMark system has been designed for businesses to solidify their electronic records management processes, withstand regulatory audits, minimize legal exposure and mitigate risks. The ProofMark system can be seamlessly integrated into the information life cycle within any business application and benefit a wide spectrum of industries. In summary, the ProofMark System provides a complete, effective and compelling solution for addressing modern data integrity issues in the enterprise.
What is a ProofMark?
A ProofMark is a persistent, self-validating digital seal on any electronic data. It cryptographically binds the data with a trusted timestamp and irrefutably proves that the data content has not been tampered with since the ProofMark was issued, no matter where the data resides or who controls it.
There are two basic ways a ProofMark can be “associated” with a data record:
- The ProofMark can be appended to the original data and stored together with it in a file system.
- The ProofMark and the original data can be stored separately, their association then maintained by an appropriate reference pointer.
What is the ProofMark System?
The ProofMark System is a system that issues, preserves, and validates ProofMarks associated with electronic data. It can be integrated seamlessly with content management systems, records management systems, storage/archiving systems and other business applications.
At a very high level, the ProofMark System architecture consists of ProofMark servers, ProofMark clients and ProofMark forensic repositories where all issued ProofMarks are securely indexed and preserved.
The ProofMark System is composed of four core Processes:
- ProofMark Issuance Process:
The ProofMark client or application generates a ProofMark issuance request and sends it to the ProofMark server. The server processes the request, constructs the ProofMark, and sends a response to the requesting client.
- ProofMark Preservation Process:
The ProofMark server registers the issued ProofMark into the forensic repository (database), preserves it and makes it available for ProofMark validation requests.
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