What is the Cloud Signature Consortium (CSC)?

Ascertia is a CSC member, a group of industry and academic organisations committed to building a new standard for cloud-based digital signatures that will support web and mobile applications and comply with the most demanding electronic signature regulations in the world. The CSC was created to develop common protocols so that distributed applications and services can leverage digital signatures in a non-proprietary way.

Security integrator and trust service provider ADACOM was looking for a robust solution that could add value to their offering, and enable customers to utilise electronic signatures via ADACOM’s workflow platform or for their own in-house deployments.

Having announced that we passed the evaluation process earlier this month, the Common Criteria process has now officially completed with the issuance of this certificate. This enables the ADSS SAM (Signature Activation Module) appliance to be listed as a certified product on the Common Criteria website (under Products for Digital Signatures).

We have become the first company in the world to pass the Common Criteria EAL4+ evaluation process against the standard EN 419 241-2 for our ADSS SAM hardware appliance, a remote Qualified Signature Creation Device (QSCD). This provides the highest level of confidence that users have sole control over their signing keys held on central servers or in the cloud. 

We are pleased to announce that we have signed a global distribution agreement with Entrust Datacard, a leading provider of trusted identity and secure issuance technology solutions. The agreement cements a long-standing relationship between us and Entrust Datacard after winning numerous business deals together worldwide. The global agreement covers Ascertia's ADSS Server and includes the server modules for digital signing, OCSP validation, SCVP validation and timestamping.

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!

MD Rod Crook recently spoke at the eID Forum, Tallinn. Rod’s talk, Enabling business applications to take advantage of eIDAS Remote Signatures, discussed how signing solutions are beneficial to organisations and what features they should be looking for when purchasing a solution.

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!

At this year’s eID Forum in Tallinn, Ascertia will be presenting and discussing how all organisations can benefit from the use of document workflow and digital signature technology. The focus will be on eIDAS compliance and in particular the way in which the new remote signing standards can be employed to optimize the user experience.

We want to let you into a little secret. Since Sep 2017 Ascertia has been actively pursuing a Common Criteria EAL4+ certification of its ADSS Server “Signature Activation Module (SAM)” Appliance.