As the first certifying authority in India to issue more than 200,000 digital signature certificates, Tata Consultancy Services has become the largest digital certifying authority in India. Earlier in February this year it crossed the 100,000-mark.

The TCS CA has grown largely due to the various initiatives by the Indian government such as the MCA 21 programme. The number of certificates issued to MCA 21 users alone is in excess of 150,000.

TCS has also been instrumental in creating awareness of the protection offered by the widespread use of digital signatures, and in offering a variety of desktop and server-side utilities that make it easy to use the digital certificate technology.

TCS CA has provided solutions to all the key and high-value segments of society, such as internet banking, stock trading, filing income tax returns, and so on. The phenomenal growth in the number of digital certificates has been facilitated by providing user-friendly, best in class technology solutions, such as the TCS public key infrastructure (PKI) called Dhruvam, as well as several associated utilities such as FileSigner, FormSigner, etc.

"Until the advent of TCS CA, PKI technology was considered user-unfriendly and difficult to deploy on a widespread geographic scale," says Dr M Vidyasagar, executive vice president and head, advanced technology centre at TCS Hyderabad. "Several customers within the government of India and the financial community rely on our products and solutions," he adds.

The TCS advanced technology centre at Hyderabad conceptualised and led the R&D initiative develop PKI products like digital signatures since 2000. TCS now offers an entire gamut of PKI related products, solutions and services ranging from digital signature services, PKI consulting, CA hosting to PKI enabling of applications, which conform to international standards and the Indian Information Technology Act.

V Rajanna, regional head, TCS Andhra Pradesh region, said, "Products like digital signatures developed at TCS Hyderabad clearly shows that this city is emerging as a destination for high value research and development work and TCS is at the forefront of leveraging the vast talent pool available in this city and the region to help our customers globally."

Kamlesh Bajaj, global head, information risk management and managed security services, said, "The 200,000 landmark reflects the level of trust and confidence enjoyed by the TCS Certifying Authority among our subscriber base, Registration Authorities and Subordinate Certifying Authorities under the TCS-CA Trust Network," Dr. Bajaj added.