Time Stamping” The Key Answer to Record Your Valuable Data

Same as in electronic world we also use to have record of all events occurred in the computer device either offline or online, either official or non-official. Purpose of recording these happenings of computer devices is the same, to use these records as a claim for further questioning about them and also to ensure the legality of working by legal persons. To record events in electronic world we have some ways and software. Commonly a term is used for this purpose which is called “Time stamping”.

There are no difficulties to understand about what it is, how it works and why it is used? It is basically an entity which is used to keep the record of every event, document, contract, agreement, bill, and transcript either it is official or non-official. But there is a misconception regarding it that either it records the event or time and date of event. Actually it records the exact date, time, format and day of the event, document, contract, agreement, bill, and transcript whatever you want to record. Along with this it also record the modification date, time and day if the document was modified again after its creation.

The question is why it is so important to time-stamp the documents? Answer could be really simple. In an e-business owners use to sign their documents or credentials and for that purpose they use electronic signatures. Through these electronic signatures they can ensure the credibility and trust regarding the signer so that their documents could be able to achieve non-disclamation. But to make all this process reliable and trustable from the receiver’s end it is necessary to have record of exact date/time/day and all details regarding the sent document or credential so that in future no one could be able to do backdating or claim of denial and forgery. That is why time-stamps are used to proof your working is legal and can’t be denied.

There is an important point to understand that to record you desired messages there are two ways either time-stamp or date-time. Both are different in a manner of their usage. Date-time is a way to record date and time only and also it uses the format starts with the year of 1000 till the year 9999. The time stamping process consists of two main procedures which are:

First to create a hash code (a mathematical code), from your desired data to be time stamped. Then send this hash code to the time stamping authority, where it store that hash code or fingerprint in a specific envelop and then put digital signatures on that envelop (CMS format), at last the signed file is returned to the computer software to be stored.

Time-stamps are the growing need of e-business to make your working officially permitted and trustable in front of other business parties and to ensure that all signed electronic documents, contracts, messages, dealings, mails and other data is not forged by anyone else during the procedure of whole dealing or transaction and is created by the original owner of dealing.