Your Digital Signature
One of the features of One Digital recorders is that they digitally sign the recordings they make, which can allow us, by verification through the use of a public and private key, to prove that a recording has not been tampered with, or to identify if it might have been.
This handy process relies on the fact that the private key, which is secured inside your recorder, has not been accessed for nefarious purposes. We use tamper-evident, individually numbered seals on the outer casing of the recorders to ensure that if this was to happen… you’d know about it.
Why protecting it is important
Should a tamper-evident seal become broken at any time, and the recorder could possibly be conceived to have fallen into the wrong hands whilst the seal is broken (e.g. if the unit is shipped via a third-party courier after its seal has been damaged) then we are no longer able to say with 100% certainty that the private key has never been accessed by an unauthorised person. Consequently, we can no longer trust the authenticity of the digital signature on any previous recordings that utilised it. This would stretch back to the time that you last had your recorder re-keyed, in some cases (in particular without regular servicing) this could be many years.
The One Digital Secure Decommissioning Process
When your recorder is past its prime and you are looking to dispose of it, you should bear in mind that if the unit is disposed of by traditional methods, the whereabouts of your private key will now be unknown to you, and it could be accessed by anyone. Remember what we said earlier about even a possible breach meaning that ALL past recordings using that signature can no longer be proven authentic? Yep. That.
For this reason, One Digital offer a Secure Decommissioning service, where we will take your recorder to dispose of it for you. We check that the seal is intact and that the unique number on it matches our records, signing off your key as secure. The medium holding the key is then destroyed, the system dismantled, and parts disposed of by relevant, and environmentally responsible, means.
The continued protection of your Digital Signature
This security measure is, in most cases, likely to be secondary to your own secure working practices (perhaps you seal a master copy of the recording for long-term storage), but many customers do like the additional reassurance that our digital signature offers.
To have full confidence in the reliability of your private key, we at One Digital need to see the recorders from time to time, to check the unit and seal, and to re-key the recorder with a new key. Retiring the old key in this way protects all recordings that had been made prior to the re-keying process, regardless of any intrusion in the future.
What you can do now
If you find the digital signature feature to be of value to you, your options for keeping it safe follow:
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If you have a support agreement with us, re-keying your recorder is free of charge. If your recorder is more than 3 years old, contact support@onedigital.ltd.uk to arrange for your recorder to be returned to us for re-keying.
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Re-keying is included in the cost of a Full Service. We recommend that a Full Service is carried out on your recorders every 3 years to prevent faults occurring from the moving parts failing. Contact us on info@onedigital.ltd.uk for costs of a Full Service for your machine as it varies according to number of drives and age. Please have your recorder serial number (beginning with ‘A’ or ‘B’ and ending in ‘S’) to hand.
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We also offer a re-keying only service, which costs £70 ex. VAT. Please be aware that for some older units this option may not be available, as they may require some of the hardware to be updated before they can be re-keyed.
If you would like any more information about any of what has been detailed above, please get in touch.
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