Document Signing - Business Needs
Businesses can save a substantial amount of money by moving from expensive paper-based processes to electronic documents, files and data. However this process is often reverted back to paper at point of document signing or approval, making the migration to digital only partially beneficial! Another poor alternative is to use digital approval process but with no real security. Organisations need to have trust in their key business documents and ensure that unauthorised changes cannot go. They can also benefit from binding the originator and approver identities into such documents to provide traceability, accountability and a clear sign-off audit trail. Systems and people reading the data need to know that it is original and unchanged. The world is already too full of fake messages and documents intended either as a joke, a defacement or as part of a fraud or deception.
Reputations are at risk when identities cannot be adequately confirmed; fraud and public embarrassment are the result when original documents are found to have been changed. Within internal processes people need to have their signature on key documents so that they can be held accountable for their actions. No signature means no security and therefore no trust! This is as a true in the digital world as it is in the paper.
Ascertia's digital signature solutions provide these trust services to business documents and workflows. They can be used via web-interfaces or by application APIs or automated systems. Ascertia enables trust within PDF documents, XML data and other files formats, web forms, automated transactions and emails.
Digital Signatures Solutions Simplified
Ascertia’s ADSS Server product range is based on the industry-accepted concept of delegating complex security, data and document signing and signature verification to a trustworhyed security server. Such delegation simplifies business applications and improves security through centralised management, policy management controls and auditing features, not to mention much reduced implementation and change costs as a result of this simplified architecture.
Ascertia's ADSS Server is based on industry standard protocols for communicating with an e-Trust server, including OASIS Digital Signature Specifications (DSS) for server-side digital signing and verification, W3C XML Key Management Specifications (XKMS) and Server-Side Certificate Validation Protocol (SCVP) for certificate validation, IETF Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) for real-time revocation status checking, IETF TSP for communicating with a Time Stamping Authority and IETF Long-Term Archive & Notary Service (LTANS) for secure e-notarisation and data archiving.
Ascertia also offers Ascertia Docs as a turnkey document signing and approval workflow solution. Ascertia Docs is a Windows .NET web-application that manages people and documents ensuring that a document owner can quickly upload a document and share it with one or more people or a group of people for review and digital signature. It allows existing locally held signing keys and certificates to be used, or provides each user with centrally generated and held signing keys and certificates as part of the solution. Each individual signs with their own signing credentials and in using these Ascertia Docs leverages the power of ADSS Server and ADSS Go>Sign Applet.
7 Real World Benefits
- A verifiable User Identity – unequivocal proof of a user’s national, legal or business status
- A verifiable Business Identity – unequivocal proof of the legal status of a business
- They bind verified User or Business Identities into documents or data in a way that cannot be forged
- They provide certainty that the document or data is signed-off and/or approved
- They provide non-repudiable legal weight evidence
- They define who signed in what order and the date and time of this action
- They help to achieve compliance with many legal & regulatory requirements
Document Signing Products Coverage
Document Signing and Workflow
Enabling any organisation to use an internal or external cloud service to upload, prepare and flow a document to specified people for digital signature and approval using server or local keys and certificates
Corporate Digital Signatures
Enabling a corporate or role-based digital signature to be applied by business applications using server-held keys and certificates.
Server-created user Digital Signatures
Enabling end-users to sign using unique keys held securely on a server, typically generated and certified during a web registration process.
Client-side user Digital Signatures
Enabling end-user document signing within your web applications, using signing keys held on the desktop or within a smartcard or secure download of roamed signing credentials
Desktop PDF document signing application
Enables the creation and digital signing of PDF documents. Full end-user control over digital signature location and appearance. Uses locally held signing keys /certificates Products
A Windows only application aimed at providing easy PDF creation, digital signing, certifying, time-stamping, verifying and DRM protection
Desktop File signing application
Full-standalone desktop application for digital signing and encrypting any type of file, using locally held digital signing keys within the desktop or smartcard Products
A Windows only application aimed at providing easy singing and encryption of any file type. Able to protect multiple files and folders.
Local language Support
For web applications, ADSS Server expects the browser pages to be created by application developers using local language that is suitable for the business purpose and the end-users. Go>Sign Professional Applet GUI is fully multi-lingual. Similarly local language support is available for PDF Sign&Seal by working with our local partners.