RFC 3125 (rfc3125) - Page 4 of 44

Electronic Signature Policies

RFC 3125             Electronic Signature Policies        September 2001


   An arbitrator, is an entity which arbitrates disputes between a
   signer and a verifier.  It acts as verifier when it verifies the
   electronic signature after it has been previously validated.

   The Trusted Service Providers (TSPs) are one or more entities that
   help to build trust relationships between the signer and verifier.
   Use of TSP specific services MAY be mandated by signature policy.
   TSP supporting services include: user certificates, cross-
   certificates, time-stamping tokens,CRLs, ARLs, OCSP responses.

   A Trusted Service Providers (TSPs) MAY be a Signature Policy Issuer,
   as Such, the TSP MUST define the technical and procedural
   requirements for electronic signature creation and validation, in
   order to meet a particular business need.

   The following other TSPs are used to support the functions defined in
   this document:

      *  Certification Authorities;
      *  Registration Authorities;
      *  Repository Authorities (e.g., a Directory);
      *  Time-Stamping Authorities;
      *  One-line Certificate Status Protocol responders;
      *  Attribute Authorities.

   Certification Authorities provide users with public key certificates.

   Registration Authorities allows the registration of entities before a
   CA generates certificates.

   Repository Authorities publish CRLs issued by CAs, , cross-
   certificates (i.e., CA certificates) issued by CAs, signature
   policies issued by Signature Policy Issuers and optionally public key
   certificates (i.e., leaf certificates) issued by CAs.

   Time-Stamping Authorities attest that some data was formed before a
   given trusted time.

   One-line Certificate Status Protocol responders (OSCP responders)
   provide information about the status (i.e., revoked, not revoked,
   unknown) of a particular certificate.

   Attributes Authorities provide users with attributes linked to public
   key certificates

   An Arbitrator is an entity that arbitrates disputes between a signer
   and a verifier.




Ross, et al.                  Experimental