Digital Signatures

Digital Signatures

In SOFT Instrument Link, both worklist and result records can be digitally signed to improve security and traceability. The signature mechanism is based on the XML DSIG Specification, as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Signature Working Group.

Any AnIML document can be covered with one or more signatures. By building on XML DSIG, off-the-shelf tools for creating and verifying signatures are widely available.

W3C XML DSIG provides several valuable characteristics:

Attributability – you can tell who made a signature
Tamper-evidence – you can tell if data has changed since signing
Multi-signature support – multiple people and/or systems can sign a data set (approval workflows)
Automated validation – before accepting a file, instrument or LIMS can confirm its provenance
Integrates with enterprise PKI – some organizations already have certificate management infrastructures
Stored in XML – easy to read and write, broad developer experience
Royalty free, widely implemented – free libraries for Java, .net, …