A great product that was first introduced to us for personal data protection and identification was PGP. It’s still around and quite effective. Most major financial institutions use it in its commercial form in North America for disk encryption and tamper detection.
The reason a Public Key Infrastructure doesn’t look like a widespread identity system is that it needs a web of trust; if somebody you know has signed my PGP key, then you take their word that I am who I say I am. That works well for close groups of friends – or for the corporations and government departments around the world who rely on PKIs based on the commercial PGP offerings or the OpenPGP SDK that’s now available.
Here’s a link to the open version.
A great write up on PGP from the Reg.
Tags: Encryption, Decryption, Identity Management, PGP
