The Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA) had issued the update on the Class 2 Digital Signature Certificate (DSC’s) issuance, which shall be withdrawn, and only the Class 3 Digital Signature Certificate (DSC’s)is going to be issued from 1st January 2021.
Under the Information Technology Act, the Digital Signature Certificates (DSC) are being issued through the Certifying Authorities (CA) after successful verification of the identity as well as addresses credentials of the candidate.
Also, the guidelines that are issued by the Controller of Certifying Authorities need to be strictly followed by the Certifying Authorities.
The Controller of Certifying Authorities directed the Certifying Authorities towards following the thorough guidelines concerning the “eKYC Account, DSC Application Form, Mandatory Information in the DSC application Form, Physical verification/Video verification, Documents verification, Key pair generation/Storage, Invoice/Acknowledgement, Subscriber Agreement, DSC Issuance, Role of Trusted person, Special purpose certificates, Encryption Certificate, First-factor Authentication, Second-factor Authentication, SMS-OTP, etc”.
The Authority had issued guidelines for maintaining an e-KYC account by Certifying Authority which includes Authentication for eKYC Account, Aadhaar offline eKYC, Organisational KYC for Organisational Person Certificates, Verification of Authorised Signatory, Banking eKYC for Banking Customers, PAN eKYC for Personal Certificates, and eKYC for foreign candidates.
The Controller of Certifying Authorities had issued guidelines for issuance of Special purpose Digital Signature Certificate (DSC’s) which include SSL Certificates, and Document Signer Certificate.
The guidelines made for many annexures namely Supporting documents for organization verification, Terms and conditions for the usage of HSM for class 3 Organisational Person DSCs, GST registration Verification, Document proof as Identity and address, the standards for the eligibility of government organization as well as its authorized signatory and Video Verification.
The inclusive modifications include. –
1. The overall guidelines to the Certifying Authorities (CAs) have been categorized and planned under each topic. (1. Guidelines to CAs)
2. Email id of the candidate is compulsory for issuance of Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) based on the eKYC account activated by the Certifying Authorities. The Email-id is optional for the eKYC accounts activated only for the purpose of the sign. (1. Guidelines to CAs 1.8(1))
3. The Certifying Authorities would issue only class 3 individual signing certificates (both organizational and personal) towards subscribers on tokens from 01st January 2021 onwards. The issue of Class 2 individual signing certificates (both organizational and personal) towards subscribers would be discontinued from 01st January 2021 onwards. The Class 3 certificate would have OID of Class 2 also (1. Guidelines to CAs 1.13 (1))
4. The rest of the PIN procedure for crypto token would be removed from 01st January 2021 onwards (1. Guidelines to CAs 1.13(3))
5. At large, the video verification was made compulsory for all categories of candidates which includes organizational. (1. Guidelines to CAs (11(1)).
6. For banking eKYC mode, video verification is not compulsory.
7. Provided the option of acknowledgment together with the invoice to make certain the periodic reconciliation (1. Guidelines to CAs 1.14(1))
8. The key escrow of encryption certificate was made compulsory (1. Guidelines to Cas 1.19(1))
9. In the identity and address proof added "Any Government-issued photo ID having Name and address."(Annexure-IV - Document proof as Identity and address)
10. The acceptability of digitally signed documents such as e PAN, Driving License, etc. was also included (Annexure-IV - Document proof as Identity and address)
11. Added Annexure V - The criteria for the eligibility of government organization and its authorized signatory (Annexure-IV.)
12. With the intention of making video verification unique, a new random number in each session of the video was included. (Annexure VI - Video Verification). The essential guidelines for capturing the video were also included.
Conclusion
From 1st January 2021, every organization DSCs shall be in paperless mode only. The organization DSCs in paper mode shall not be issued by any Certifying Authority. It is important to note that the users who already have the class 2 DSCs, could continue to use the same until the expiry in the websites which are accepting the class 2 DSCs.
Author:
Leave a Comment
Previous Comments