Arcot Digital Signature Solution Available for use With
SAFE-BioPharma Association's New Roaming Digital ID
Sunnyvale, California -- October 23, 2007 — SAFE-BioPharma Association and Arcot Systems today announced that Arcot's SignFort now supports use of the SAFE™ digital identity and signature standard, enabling SAFE user credentials to be stored centrally on a network and accessed from any location at any time. Arcot's SignFort allows electronic documents to be signed with SAFE digital signatures from any location without tokens, smart cards or software stored on desktops. Further, the SignFort application provides strong authentication of the user before allowing access to the SAFE credential. SAFE-BioPharma comprises the world's largest biopharmaceutical companies.
"The SAFE model defines a technical and legal framework for establishing trust in digital identities and signatures, and Arcot's SignFort offers a convenient and secure way to apply SAFE signatures to electronic documents," said R. ‘Doc' Vaidhyanathan, vice president of product management for Arcot. "With SignFort, individuals only need to have Adobe® Acrobat® or Adobe Reader® software to be able to apply SAFE-compliant digital signatures."
The potential savings from replacing ink signatures and paper documents are significant. The pharmaceutical industry estimates that approximately 40% of annual research and development costs in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries are attributed to paper-based business processes, representing $9 billion in the United States, alone.
Arcot SignFort and Adobe Reader streamline the process of digitally signing documents allowing employees, partners and customers to sign documents in an easy, scalable and cost-efficient manner. SignFort enhances audit capabilities of signing operations by maintaining detailed logs. Arcot's patented authentication technology embedded into Adobe Reader 8 provides enhanced security for signing electronic documents.
"Together, Adobe and Arcot have revolutionized digital signing because the user no longer needs to install additional software or provision digital IDs to their PC," said John Landwehr, director of Security Solutions at Adobe. "Now, the pharmaceutical industry relying on SAFE digital credentials can take advantage of roaming digital IDs to rapidly move away from paper-based business processes."
"Arcot has a long history of working with the pharmaceutical industry and SAFE," said Mollie Shields-Uehling, president and CEO, SAFE BioPharma Association. "By supporting use of SAFE signatures, Arcot is helping SAFE member companies ensure the veracity and legality of digitally signed documents and is streamlining business and regulatory approval processes and operations."
About Arcot's SignFort Digital Signature Solution
The SignFort solution centrally stores each user's digital ID. Access to the digital ID is protected by Arcot strong authentication technology. The signatures are applied from the central server during the signing process. This provides complete lifecycle management for digital IDs and administrator control of signature quality. The administrator can ensure that certificate validation and secure timestamps are embedded in each signature, in conformance with SAFE requirements. Additionally, Arcot SignFort creates a detailed log of every signing operation – a powerful tool to aid in any dispute resolution over the validity of digital signatures.
About SAFE-BioPharma Association
SAFE-BioPharma Association is the non-profit association that created and manages the SAFE™ digital identity and digital signature standard for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.
For more information visit www.arcot.com.
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