ETSI ESI TC Overview

As stated in its Terms of Reference page ETSI Electronic Signatures and Infrastructures (ESI) Technical Committee is the lead body within ETSI in relation to the standardization activities dealing with Electronic Signatures and related Infrastructures within ETSI. So far ESI activities have concentrated on:

  1. Developing generic standards, guides and reports relating to electronic signatures and related trust infrastructure.

  2. Liaising with both other ETSI and external bodies in relation to electronic signatures and related trust infrastructures.

  3. Establishing a continuing work plan in relation to electronic signatures and related trust infrastructures.

ETSI-ESI Standardization highlight


ETSI- ESI TC carries out standardization activities in different electronic signature related areas:
  1. Electronic Signature Formats. ETSI TS 101 903: "XML Advanced Electronic Signatures (XAdES)" and ETSI TS 101 733: "CMS Advanced Electronic Signatures (CAdES)" standardize these formats for Advanced Electronic Signatures.

  2. Infrastructure, including:

    1. Specification of new architectural elements. ETSI TS 102 231: "Provision of Harmonized Trust Service Provider status information" specifies a format for publishing information on the status of Trusted Service Providers and the services that they provide, as assessed against certain assessment schemes

    2. Profiling of architectural elements. ETSI-ESI has issued profiles for Qualified Certificates (ETSI TS 101 862), for X.509 v3 Certificates issued to natural persons (TS 102 280), and for time-stamps (ETSI TS 101 861).

  3. Policies, including:

    1. Signature Policy Formats. ETSI TR 102 038: " XML format for signature policie" and ETSI TR 102 272: "ASN.1 format for signature policies", define machine-processing structured formats for signature policies documents that govern the creation and verification of electronic signatures.

    2. Policies for Trusted Services Providers in different areas:

      1. ETSI TS 102 573: "Policy requirements for trust service providers signing and/or storing data for digital accounting" specifies security management and policy requirements applicable to TSPs that issue fiscally relevant electronically signed documents and/or store them on behalf of taxable persons.

      2. At present ETSI-ESI is working on Registered Electronic mail Systems (REM systems: e-mail systems that provide trusted evidences that certain facts have actually occurred). ETSI-ESI will soon publish the new TS 102 640: "Registered Electronic Mail (REM) Architecture, Formats and Policies", a multi-part document that will specify: a generic architecture for REM systems, data requirements and formats for signed evidences in REM systems, and Policy requirements for trust service providers providing signed evidences in REM systems.

  4. Guidance material. ETSI TS 102 176: "Algorithms and Parameters for Secure Electronic Signatures". This multi-part specification deals in its Part 1with hash functions and asymmetric algorithms, and in its Part 2 with secure channel protocols and algorithms for signature creation devices

ETSI ESI relevant links

ETSI specifications can be searched for and downloaded from here.

The ETSI ESI TC Terms of Reference can be found here.

The ETSI ESI TC mission statement page can be found here here.

A summary of ETSI ES TC and its relationship with other European standardization initiatives can be found here here.

All the publicly available information on ESI TC, including meeting calendars and meeting documents, and the former links, can be found at the ETSI ESI TC page in the ETSI portal here.