Ministry Plans to Implement Country Signing Certificate Authority to All Public Services Sites

Prior to the vast growth of digital industry in Indonesia, digital security is indeed one crucial thing that cannot be neglected. Based on this premise, the Ministry of Communication and Information (MCI) announced that they will soon enable the Country Signing Certificate Authority (CSCA) digital sertification for Indonesia-based websites. Using the national CA root, it is expected that by 2015 all public services websites should've implemented this sertification system.

As cited from Antara, the Informatics Application Division of MCI’s Director Bambang Heru Tjahjono suggested, “This digital certification is important, as it shows that the public services are trustworthy enough. Trust remains the key of any transaction.”

Tjahjono further added that the publication of the certificate must be done by licensed institution. In this regard, he revealed that the Ministry has planned to form a special institution designated to take the responsibility.

“We still export the certificate all this time. In the coming years, we will form a national digital certification administrator,” he mentioned.

He continued, “This is in accordance with the Government Act number 82 year 2012, which administers about the Administration of Electronic System and Transaction in Digital Financial Services.”

The above diagram, which we took from the German Federal Information Security Office’s website, shows how the CSCA works. A digital certificate is required to minimize the possibility of man-in-the-middle attacks, in which someone acts like the rightful one for the document, when he is actually not. This is because the CA certificate will verify the CA signature in the server certificate before connecting users to secure connection. Browsers, usually, have provided various trustworthy CA certificates.