Audit glossary

Digital signature

Proof of who sent a message and that it wasn’t changed.

CISA

The sender creates a hash of the message and encrypts it with their private key. The recipient decrypts it with the sender’s public key and compares hashes. This gives integrity, authentication of the sender and non-repudiation, but not confidentiality.

On the exam

A digital signature does NOT keep a message secret. If the answer choice says confidentiality, it’s wrong.

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