Abstract: A system, method and computer readable medium for securely transmitting an information package (10) to an addressee (190) via a network (108), wherein an addressee (190) is not required to have a private-public key pair before the package (10) is sent. A sending system (102) encrypts the package (10) with a package encryption key (600) and then encrypts a package decryption key (601) with an escrow encryption key (380) obtained from an escrow key manager (116). The encrypted package (10) and encrypted package decryption key (601) are held in escrow by a server system (104), until the addressee (190) is issued a new public and private key pair (390, 391). The server system (104) decrypts the package decryption key (601), re-encrypts it with the addressee's new public key (390), and forwards the encrypted package (10) and re-encrypted package decryption key (601) to the addressee's receiving system (106). The receiving system (106) receives the delivery and decrypts the information package (10).

Abstract: Systems, methods and computer-readable media for generating and utilizing a universal signature object (100). A universal signature object (100) binds a digital signature (112) to digital data (200), regardless of the file format of the version of the digital data (200). A signing program (400) generates a universal signature object (100) or appends a digital signature (122) to a previously generated universal signature object (100). A universal-signature-object viewer (600) utilizes a universal signature object (100) to display information contained in the universal signature object (100) or generated from the universal signature object (100).

Abstract: Applications are integrated with application-specific certification authorities (CAs) for issuing application-specific certificates. For each certificate issued to a subscriber by a master CA, the application-specific CAs issue corresponding application-specific certificates to the subscriber. For each certificate revoked master CA, the application-specific CAs revoke the corresponding application-specific certificates of the subscriber.