Cryptographic archiving
Don't worry anymore about the longevity of trust providers nor the reliability of signature algorithms! The core idea behind Perennity is to separate the storage function from the trust services needed to maintain the cryptographic proofs.
Cryptographic maintenance principle
The objective of cryptographic maintenance is to handle the long-term archiving of verifiable evidence of existence.
Thus, the archiver who is in charge of the document storage, runs through Perennity a cryptographic maintenance operation:
- Like Russian Dolls, a new proof envelope is created with the latest standards, which contains the previous proof: this allows to address the signature algorithm longevity issue.
- A timestamp authority is called upon in order to bring a legal proof to this new envelope.
One benefit of this idea is to confine the trust to a basic and legally well-known trust provider.
Separation between storage and proof management
Perennity does not store itself neither archived documents nor their proof, but works in client-server mode with one or several storage solutions, like an Electronic Document Management solution or a storage provider.
Thus, cryptographic issues - addressed by Perennity - are no more related to storage issues like the kind of support, number of copies, external or internal housing, data migration...
By separating the storage itself from the management of the proofs, we gain context-freeness, reversibility and transferability.
Separation between trust provider and cryptographic maintenance
The trust required to create new proof is only brought by the timestamp authority, which is basic and well-defined.
One or several timestamp authorities can be used by Perennity to maintain proofs during long duration. Adding a new timestamp token allows to extend electronic signature with a new envelope created with the latest algorithms.
You are not bound to a specific timestamp authority: you can change it at the drop of a hat!
Separation of the signature validation
During the cryptographic maintenance process, you have to verify the proof: all the proof envelopes are verified until the very first one.
Perennity uses an external service to do so, interacting with a validation service like Cryptolog's validation server Serenity.
Thus, you can manage signed and unsigned documents as well.
To make a long story short...
Perennity is not a trusted third party product... It allows the creation and update of cryptographic proofs, whose legal value is not bound to the storage. Thus...
- The proofs are context-free: in case of a litigation, you do not even need to explain where and how the document and its proof were stored.
- The proofs are not bound to a trust provider and to the protected data.
The proofs managed by Perennity can be verified by anyone, they are guarded against CA compromissions and potential broken algorithms.