The latest guest blog from the Ascertia partner community comes courtesy of Stefan Claeys, Managing Partner at KeySign who discusses the e-signature landscape, smart cards and remote signing.

Digital transformation is high on the business agenda. Some enterprises are closing in on mass digitisation across their processes and technologies, others are earlier in their journeys.

This year we are excited to celebrate Ascertia’s 20th anniversary!

As experts in high-trust solutions, we are often asked about the benefits of commercial off the shelf products versus seemingly more affordable Software Development Kits, Open Source libraries or third party pre-compiled libraries or binaries. 

On 15th November 2018, Ascertia launched the ADSS Server Winter ’19 release (v5.10). This release delivers a new Cryptographic Service Provider (CSP) Service enabling Remote Signing with a range of applications including Microsoft Word, Outlook and Adobe Acrobat®.  The benefits of remote signing for end users include no specialist hardware (smart cards), reduced costs, and a simplified signing process with strong security.  We hope you enjoy using this new functionality!

On 18th September 2018, Ascertia launched the ADSS Server Autumn ’18 release (v5.9). This release delivers a brand new Signature Activation Module (SAM) and Remote Authorisation Service (RAS) to support eIDAS compliant Remote Signing with Level 2 Sole Control.  The benefits of remote signing for end users include:  no specialist hardware or software; reduced costs; simplified key management; and better security and auditing.  We hope you enjoy using this new functionality!

Recently a vulnerability in the implementation of TLS protocol has been found called ROBOT (Return Of Bleichenbacher's Oracle Threat). This is the return of a 19-year-old vulnerability that allows RSA decryption and signing operations with the private key of a TLS server.