Salt Lake Attorney Appointed to e-Commerce Working Groups

Benjamin T. Wilson to Work on e-Notarization and SSL Certificate Standards

Salt Lake City, UT (PRWEB) September 10, 2005 -- Salt Lake City Attorney Benjamin T. Wilson has recently been appointed to two working groups of the American Bar Associations Section of Science and Technology Law—an e-Notarization Work Group and an Information Security Committee (ISC) work group studying the issuance of digital certificates to Internet web sites.
   
The e-Notarization Work Group is comprised of representatives from the real estate and mortgage industry, notarial associations, secretaries of state, and notary regulatory bodies. The task of the e-Notarization Work Group is to review the underlying security, enforceability and liability issues applicable to notaries as they make the transition from ink-and-paper notarizations to the notarization of electronic documents.
   
The ISC Work Group is developing a statement of guidelines for issuers of digital certificates, known as Certification Authorities” or CAs” to follow when verifying the identity of businesses that request certificates to be used at web sites. Digital certificates are part of an encryption technology called Public Key Infrastructure” or PKI.”

PKI is used to digitally sign software code and e-mail communications and to encrypt credit card information and other personal data transmitted over the Internet. Many consumers have learned to trust the lock” icon displayed by most Internet browser programs when communication is encrypted. However, this trust may diminish in the future by scams that deceive consumers by mimicking legitimate banking, financial and commercial sites.

According to Wilson, What good is encryption if you are sending your personal information to a fraudulent web site? The hope of the working group is that the guidelines will be used to improve the identity verification process and enhance consumer trust in legitimate web sites.”

About Benjamin T. Wilson
Benjamin T. Wilson, JD, CISSP, MCSE is a legal and policy consultant to business and government on matters involving business operations, government regulation, information security, and public key infrastructures. Before joining the law firm of Smith Hartvigsen PLLC as a partner, Mr. Wilson legal counsel to Digital Signature Trust, a Utah-based Certification Authority. Mr. Wilson is currently Co-Chair of the American Bar Association's Information Security Committee where he has written and edited ABA publications dealing with PKI, digital signatures and information security. Mr. Wilson is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional and a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. He received both his Honors Degree in Economics and his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Utah.

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