CommerceNet, Mitsubishi Standardize Documents for International E-Trade

Mitsubishi Corp.
and e-commerce association CommerceNet announced the availability
of standardized documents that support international cross-certification
for digitally signed trade transactions.

The documents, which include operational rules, technical specifications,
and a model electronic commerce trade agreement for international trading
partners, were developed by Mitsubishi and CommerceNet as part of an
international cross-certification pilot between JapanNet’s Certification
Authority (CA) and
CommerceNet’s CA.

“Cross-certification will be an important component of global e-commerce,”
said Jim Galvin, CommerceNet’s director of electronic commerce
technologies. “It’s unlikely that a CA in one country will issue
multi-purpose certificates to individuals in another country, principally
for legal reasons; we must be
able to work with each others’ certificates.”

During the pilot, JapanNet and CommerceNet provided independent CA services
for their clients–Mitsubishi and a U.S. trading partner–respectively.
CommerceNet operated its own root CA and issued certificates on behalf of
the unidentified U.S. trading partner while JapanNet also operated its own
root CA
and issued certificates on behalf of Mitsubishi. JapanNet and CommerceNet
cross-certified their root CAs by issuing cross-certificate credentials to
each other which the clients then used to validate their transactions.

“These standards, developed in cooperation with the Electronic Commerce
Promotion Council of Japan (ECOM), provide crucial and practical
information for transitioning international trade in electronic
transactions,” said Hideo Nakanishi, chairman of ECOM’s steering committee.
“We hope these documents
will contribute to the expansion of international electronic commerce by
cross-certification.”