1 Introduction
Signicat is a leading service provider for the management of digital identities, strong and adaptive authentication, identity assurance, signing and sealing, and long-term preservation of signed documents. It was originally founded in 2007 in Trondheim, Norway and is a privately held company. Currently it has roundabout 70 employees in eight countries with more than 250 customers globally, but with a primary focus on the Nordic and other European markets. They cover an important part of the Digital Identity Management, assurance, and signing space with broad support for a variety of IDs, including bank IDs from different countries, and eIDs. Signicat delivers a cloud-based service with support for specific IDs from a growing number of countries.
Over the past few years, IT has changed fundamentally. The shift to cloud services is one part of this fundamental change, but also included is the shifting focus from Enterprise IT to Consumer IT. Consumers and, in eGovernment, citizens are at the center of attention nowadays, requiring solutions that allow managing, connecting, authenticating, and assuring users. Beyond that, KYC (“Know Your Customer”) is of ever-increasing importance, as customers have moved to embrace digital channels. In addition, organizations are focused on creating a holistic picture of their customers, regardless of the login they use, and across all systems where customer-related information is stored.
Another facet of the shift to cloud and customer-centricity is the move from paper documents towards electronic documents, including contracts and other legally relevant documents. These documents require digital signatures that are not only legally valid today, but also in years to come. Archiving, re-sealing, and the overall preservation of signed documents is thus another challenge to solve.
Currently, there are a multitude of solutions available in the market to address some of these challenges. These include specific solutions for digital signatures, archiving solutions, Cloud IAM (Identity and Access Management) or IDaaS (Identity as a Service) for managing and authenticating users, as well as specialized solutions for CIAM (Consumer IAM) or for document signing. However, in most cases, organizations will have to combine a number of disparate solutions for a comprehensive approach to managing the journey of a customer from authentication and assurance to signed contracts.
This is partially due to the fact that such solutions might require country-specific features, particularly in three areas. Legally valid signing is subject to country-specific regulations. Archiving also might fall under such regulations. Last, but not least, strong authentication that is required for either regulatory or risk management reasons also might require support for particular authenticators that are specific to a country, such as eID (electronic ID) cards or specific banking cards.
To address these challenges, Signicat offers some of the most advanced solutions for electronic identity and electronic signing solutions. Signicat’s goal is to enable customers to do business more effectively by delivering great user experiences for the end users and at the same time reduce the risk by using advanced security technology.
Since our last review in May 2016, the company now offers Strong Customer Authentication using the end-user’s smart device. Considering the upcoming PSD2 legislation, this service will offer multi-factor authentication while at the same time making it convenient for the users.
