SignIT

SignIT

Spider.Net add-on module designed for digital signature

Taking into account the fact that the predominant users of our application are government institutions and banks, and following the measures set by the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Society, which resulted in the adoption of the necessary legislation to enable implementation of e-Government in the scope and extent as is the practice in developed European countries and the world, a logical sequence of events was for us to improve our Spider.Net application with a module for the electronic signing of documents, the Sign IT module. This enables all of the users of the Spider.Net document management system to electronically sign documents that are archived in the e@rhiva module or that are in a certain stage of the DocFlow business process.

The SignIT module allows for qualified signature and the verification of signatures of files of any format (documents, audio and video). The verification process checks the integrity of the contents of the file and the signer certificate (whether the signer certificate is qualified, revoked, expired). Also, this module, with the help of the Time service prevents false reporting of signage time and false verification. The documents archived within the e@rhiva module or that are in some stage of the DocFlow business process can, if necessary, be digitally signed. In order to apply digital signage certain prerequisites must be met, which naturally include having a personal card and certificate, as well as the existence of an appropriate Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). Certificates are unique and they are tools used to verify the authenticity of a document in a PKI environment. Digital signature guarantees authenticity, integrity and inviolability of documents. Also, a digitally signed document provides information on the digital certificate, which was used for the signage, as well as on the CA server that issued the certificate. When working with documents using the Spider.Net system, whenever there is contact with a digitally signed document a verification of signatures is made, and the user who has permission to view the given document is informed about the authenticity of the document and the validity of the digital signature.

The process of using digital signatures in an application itself is very user friendly, and is also very efficient and productive. The application allows the user to finish the job started without leaving the workplace or physical submission of paper documentation, which results in greater efficiency in terms of faster flow of business processes. A very important feature of the application is an insight into the progress of realization of business processes, though movement history.

The process of digital signature consists of three steps:

• The validation and confirmation of the document selected for digital signage (re-opening the document in a new window)
• Verification of the certificate,
• Digital signage - entering the PIN.

A document can be digitally signed several times by the same or different users. The procedure of signing the document that has already been signed, one or several times, within the SignIT module is completely the same as with the initial signage. Each subsequent signature by the same or different user will be displayed as a new digital signature.