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Digital Signature in the EU
The approval of the EU 1999/93 directive promoting the use of the electronic signature, followed by the creation of conforming legislation in the member, and candidate countries revitalized the European market of the products providing infrastructure to Web based services, e-Commerce, and automated paperless office.
The SDX (Signed Document eXpert) electronic signature integration and management product suite developed by E-Group is fully conform to the EU directive, and it is compatible with most existing Certification Authorities.
E-Group has 10 years experience of deploying PKI in several areas of industry, services, and public sectors.
SDX – Digital signature integration and management
Up until recently the widespread use of digital signature was prevented by the lack of technologically mature applications conforming to the law. During the design and development of the SDX product line we focused on the following requirements:
- SDX should be fully conform to existing and emerging standards, and legislation.
- User functions should be very simple, integrated and should follow the business logic of the application with supporting automated processes.
- Application development using SDX should be as simple as possible. Standard interface and high level workflow support should be available.
The SDX products can support practically any application that has requirements of handling or exchanging authentic electronic documents.
The SDX Product Suite
Most applications using digital signatures have client-server architecture. The SDX product suite components support application integration in a very flexible way on both client and server sides.
CLIENT SIDE COMPONENTS
- SDX Verify: Signature verification: standalone application for signature verification
- SDX Encrypt: Encryption of documents: standalone application
- SDX Professional: Signature creation and verification: standalone desktop application
- SDX Enterprise: Signature creation, verification, and also for encryption as a standalone desktop application
- SDX Browser: Internet Browser can be extended with the digital signature function as a plug-in component
- SDX Builder: Developer SDK as an API: can be used for enabling any application to handle digital signatures
SERVER SIDE COMPONENTS
- SDX VerifyAll Server: Automated verification of high volume of digitally
- signed documents, easy integration with any application
- SDX MultiSign Server: Automated creation of high volume of signatures
- SDX Mediator Server: Enables digital signature functions in an isolated network environment.
SDX FEATURES
SDX provides authentication, certification and legal verification services for online business communication and transactions. The main SDX features are summarized below:
- SDX manages the necessary functions required to issue a digital signature, according to the W3C & IETF XML standard.
- Conforms to the Device for Creating Secure Signature criteria required for creating a certified signature.
- SDX Professional is a Qualified Electronic Signature creation and verification application.
- Supports multiple signatures, meaning that during e.g. a licensing process one document can be signed by many people or multiple signatures may be verifed.
- Data proving authenticity can be stored for later reference (e.g. who and when signed the document)
- Supports timestamp providers that conform to the RFC specifications. The time of the signature may be authenticated by an independent provider.
- Independent from the PKI system used, i.e. it is transparent for all PKIs that use X.509 certificates (Entrust, Baltimore, VeriSign, etc.)
- Certificate validity checking (manual and automatic CRL management, OCSP) is Electronic Signature Policy (ESP) independent
APPLICATIONS OF SDX
Components of SDX products suite can be used with virtually any application requiring the handling of authentic electronic documents. Some examples of applications using SDX electronic signature are given below.
- On-line declarations (tax, pension funds, etc.)
- Electronic account statements
- Electronic signatures in e-mails
- Authentic attachments
- Electronic signature in isolated LAN
- Central clearance of incoming mails
- Authentic e-mails
- Electronic archiving systems
- Electronic invoicing
- On-line public services
System requirements
SERVER SIDE
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008
CLIENT SIDE
Microsoft Windows XP
Microsoft Vista
Microsoft Windows 7
Microsoft Office 2007
- Microsoft Windows XP
- Microsoft Windows Vista
- Microsoft Windows 7
 
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