3 takeaways from our latest webinar
Electronic signatures are merely the first pieces of the puzzle in order to fully digitize of the entire life cycle of a document. There is a wide array of additional services that you can use to complement or enhance your e-signatures. Some of these services, just as regulated as the e-signatures, are either unknown or little promoted.
So, in our latest webinar, “Discover electronic signatures and their eIDAS complementary solutions”, we put the spotlight on the timestamping, the e-seal, and the e-signature validation service. Here is a short recap of what was discussed and the three main takeaways from the webinar.
To watch a full replay of our webinar, check our LuxTrust channel here. There you can also access our previous webinars on e-signature.
After a quick overview of the European legal framework in the field and the current electronic signature levels, Anne Reuland, our Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer, explained the differences between an electronic signature and an electronic seal, a new legal concept introduced by eIDAS Regulation.
The electronic seal enables companies (generally speaking, legal entities) to sign and authenticate the content of their documents. It guarantees the origin and protects the integrity of the document.
TAKEAWAY NO 1: “Since it can be applied both manually and automatically, the electronic seal is highly useful for signing massive volumes of documents (invoices, medical reports…).”
Then, Anne spoke about the timestamping, a simple and quite straightforward service. You use it to record the time and date (from independent sources) in order to prove with a high level of assurance that a transaction or some particular data existed at a specific moment in time.
TAKEAWAY NO 2: “A timestamp strengthens your electronic signature, allowing you to verify and prove that your electronic signature certificate was valid at the time of signature, even if it expires or is revoked afterwards.”
Thomas Kopp, our Chief Scientist, took the relay and presented the e-signature validation service; a service highly useful especially when you want to make sure that the e-signatures (or e-seals) applied on the documents you receive are also valid and trustworthy.
TAKEAWAY NO 3: “There are some public tools available in order to validate an e-signature, but they are vulnerable to hacking risks and require a certain expertise from the user to properly configure them. The alternative is to use a validation service (compliant with eIDAS Regulation) provided by a qualified trust services provider (QTSP). Through this service, you can validate the signed document or just the e-signature structure (the document remaining this within the organisation for confidentiality reasons).”
In the last part of the webinar, Aurélie Bayard, our Head of Presales, showed how some of these services work in practice using our trust services hub and e-signature platform, COSI. In her demo, Aurélie sealed and signed electronically a purchase order. Then, she explained how and why to validate an e-signature on an invoice. If you have any questions about any of these services, feel free to contact any of the webinar speakers here.
All our webinars are recorded. Do not hesitate to check our channel and learn more our eIDAS e-signatures and other related services.