ETSI - European Telecommunications Standards Institute
Latest
TS 103 173-2013
Scope
The present document defines a baseline profile for CAdES that provides the basic features necessary for a wide range of business and governmental use cases for electronic procedures and communications to be applicable to a wide range of communities when there is a clear need for interoperability of AdES signatures used in electronic documents to be interchanged across borders. In particular it takes into account eSignature needs in the context of the EU Services Directive [i.7]. The present document defines four different conformance levels addressing incremental requirements to maintain the validity of the signatures over the long term@ in a way that all the requirements addressed at a certain level are always addressed also by the levels above. Each level requires the presence of certain CAdES attributes@ suitably profiled for reducing the optionality as much as possible and referring to the forms that are specified in CAdES [1]. Clause 4 identifies the four conformance levels and shows how these levels might encompass the life cycle of the electronic signatures. Clause 5 provides details on the way that the requirements will be specified throughout the present document. Clause 6 profiles short-term related CAdES attributes. Clause 7 profiles a CAdES signature for which a Trust Service Provider has generated a trusted token (time-mark or time-stamp token) proving that the signature itself actually existed at a certain date and time. Clause 8 profiles long-term related CAdES attributes tackling the long term availability of the signature validation material. Clause 9 profiles long-term related CAdES attributes tackling the long term availability and integrity of the signature validation material. NOTE: The present document makes use of certain verbal forms (e.g. may@ shall@ shall not and should) as key words to signify requirements@ conforming to ETSI Drafting Rules@ clause 14a [i.6].