Time stamping
The time-stamping service offered by the Central Bank of Costa Rica through its Time-Stamping Authority (SINPE TSA) may be used to reliably locate a document in time, with the SINPE TSA acting as a trusted third party and attesting to the existence of the data and its exact time of issuance.
The time attached to the stamp is the GMT date/time (Greenwich Mean Time) with a deviation not greater than 500 milliseconds from the official GMT. The stamp is generated using the SHA2 family of algorithms (SHA-256 or SHA-512) for electronic documents, based on a unique identifier of the document content (hash).
The simplified time-stamping process is as follows:
• The document or the signature of a document is generated, and a digest (hash) is calculated.
• The digest is sent to the time-stamping authority.
• The time-stamping authority generates a seal with the official fingerprint and time.
• The timestamp is affixed (stamped) to the document.
• The authority retains evidence of the stamps for future consultations or document validations.
