CODEL: The Key To Digital Certainty

• 2: Home
• 3: News
• 4: People
• 5: Register
  • 5.1: Change Password
  • 5.2: Forgotten Password
• 9: Verify Item
• 10: Compliance
• 11: Applications
  • 11.1: Financial Services
  • 11.2: Webform Authentication
  • 11.3: Government
    • 11.3.1: National Identity Cards
  • 11.4: Legal
    • 11.4.1: Legal Copyright
    • 11.4.2: Anti-Counterfeiting Legal Action
  • 11.5: Software
  • 11.6: Music
  • 11.7: Pharmaceutical
  • 11.8: Supply Chain Visibility
    • 11.8.1: Validation Reference Length
  • 11.9: Anti-Counterfeiting
    • 11.9.1: Ticket Copying
    • 11.9.2: Retail Voucher
    • 11.9.3: VR Tests
  • 11.10: Digital Imaging
• 12: Products
  • 12.1: Codel Bible
  • 12.3: Codel Email
  • 12.4: Codel E-Wills
  • 12.5: Anti-Counterfeit Software
• 13: Partners
  • 13.1: List
  • 13.2: Partner Programme
  • 13.3: Marketing Materials
• 14: Technical
  • 14.1: Security
  • 14.2: Data Storage
  • 14.3: Glossary
  • 14.4: Hash & Hashing
    • 14.4.1: Hash Change
    • 14.4.2: Hash Table
    • 14.4.3: Master Document Hash
    • 14.4.4: Hash Publication in the Financial Times
    • 14.4.5: SHA 256 Hashing Algorithm
  • 14.5: Audit Trail Protection
    • 14.5.1: Local Data Audit Policy
• 16: Contact
• 18: White Papers

Audit Trail Protection

See Codels Flow Charts on Audit Trail Protection

Quick Chart   

Audit Trail Protection 

1. Store the "fingerprints" of all relevant documents in small tables for each user and each day.
2. Treat those tables as audited documents themselves and store their fingerprints in other small tables.
3. At the end of each day, create a final table with the fingerprints of all the other tables and send that fingerprint to Codel.
4. Codel burns the fingerprint onto a CD.
5. Codel burns lots of other similar fingerprints onto the same CD.
6. When the CD is full, or at the end of the day (whichever comes first), a table of the fingerprints for the day/CD is created.
7. The fingerprint of that table is published in a publication with wide circulation at present as an index in the data and markets section of the Financial Times .

How this Protects the Audit Trail:

1. Anyone wishing to validate an audit protected document starts at the source.
2. Does the fingerprint of the original still match the recorded fingerprint in its first table?
3. If so, does the fingerprint of that table still match its entry in the next level table
4. and so on, till we get to the fingerprint sent to Codel. Does it still match the Codel record?
5. If so, does the fingerprint of its CD still match the published fingerprint?
6. If the answer is "Yes" all the way up the hierarchy, then we can be absolutely sure that the current version of the document is as it was at the time we published the CD fingerprint.
7. Similarly, if the answer is "No" at any point, then we can be equally sure that something has changed and we can no longer trust the data.
8. The importance of the Publication in traditional printed journals is that, with sufficient will and resources, a corrupt user or attacker could replace an entire digital audit trail without trace and thus make it look like the audited data passed the above tests all the way up the tree. However, there is no existing means of similarly altering a million copies of the published printed data without the attempt being somewhat obvious.