A Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) is a secure digital key that certifies the identity of the holder, issued by a Certifying Authority (CA). It typically contains your identity (name, email, country, APNIC account name and your public key). Digital Certificates use Public Key Infrastructure meaning data that has been digitally signed or encrypted by a private key can only be decrypted by its corresponding public key. A digital certificate is an electronic "credit card" that establishes your credentials when doing business or other transactions on the Web.
With Digital Signature Certificate you can authenticate the documents from anywhere in the world. Digital Signature Certificate is very much equivalent to physical signature. It ensures that the document sent is safe and secured which is done by encrypting the document and it can be decoded only by the computer and therefore alternations cannot be made to the original document. Digital Signature Certificate is legally accepted under the provisions of IT Act 2000.
Assurance Level : Class 1 certificates shall be issued for both business personnel and private individuals use. These certificates will confirm that the information in the application provided by the subscriber does not conflict with the information in well-recognized consumer databases.
Applicability : This provides a basic level of assurance relevant to environments where there are risks and consequences of data compromise, but they are not considered to be of major significance.
As e-filing is made compulsory in ROC, every director / signing authority needs to have their Digital Signature Certificate. Its now mandatory to obtain Class-2 or Class-2 with PAN Encryption Digital Signature Certificate for any person who is required to sign manual documents and returns filed with ROC as per MCA21. Also an Individual is required to obtain Class-2 DSC with PAN Encryption for e-filing his return with Income Tax, India.
Class 3 Digital Signature Certificate is the upgraded version of Class 2 Digital Signature Certificate. By Using This Certificate You can Participate/Bid in Any Kind of On-line Tenders/Auction across India. To participate in the e-tendering process, every vendor is required to use a Class 3 Digital Signatures Certificate.