The Forestry Commission’s eSales system uses digital certificates to encrypt all sensitive or personal information. This means that you as a viewer or bidder can be sure, and have the assurance, that you are doing business with the FC (not an impostor) and the information that you are sending cannot be intercepted or decrypted by anyone else.
Technically, digital certificates, bind the identity of an organisation to a pair of electronic keys that can be used to encrypt and sign digital information. A digital ID makes it possible to verify someone else’s claim that they have the right to use a given key, helping to prevent people from using phony keys to impersonate other users. Used in conjunction with encryption, digital IDs provide a complete security solution assuring the identity of one or all parties involved in a transaction.
Digital certificates are issued by a trusted third party called a Certification Authority (CA) in this case VeriSign.
