A method of providing improved security in a communication system used to transfer information between at least a pair of correspondents. The communication between the correspondents generally comprises steps of generating key pairs in accordance with the arithmetic properties of a chosen algorithm, communicating one of the keys, being a public key, to the other party by way of a certificate, generation and transmission of a signature using a private key of the key pairs by one of the correspondents and transmitting the signature to the other correspondent and verification of the signature by the recipient. The invention provides for the additional step of verifying the public key conform to the arithmetic properties dictated by the requirements of the selected algorithm.