EuroSignCard Trusts Time to DigiStamp

By Randy Scasny
March 16, 2001

Luxembourg-based, security-technology firm EuroSignCard S.A. announced today that it will outsource DigiStamp's "trusted" time-stamping solution for its finanical center (commercial and government) customers.

According to the agreement, DigiStamp's product suite will become part of EuroSignCard's public key infrastructure to provide "trusted" time-stamping for financial transactions. (EuroSignCard's products include Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) architectures, smart cards, and cryptography techniques.)

EuroSignCard hopes to obtain "a new competitive advantage with an interoperable and scalable time stamp service." In return, DigiStamp will get access to the European market for its time-stamping services.

Unlike "system time," the trusted-time model cannot be altered easily, based on hashed algorithms and PKI technology. Trusted time is becoming more prevalent for two reasons: large financial transactions are conducting more transactions online as well as the courts are increasing their use of electronic documentation.

"Our customers are moving millions of euros in transactions between financial institutions via the Internet; absolute legal certainty as to the time and place the parties entered the transaction is critical. DigiStamp has an open standards based toolkit to provide our developers with just such services," said David Sweigert, Managing Director of EuroSignCard S.A.

Using DigiStamp's SecureTime API Toolkit, EuroSignCard can integrate DigiStamp's e-TimeStamp service into their existing software. The toolkit can provide an application programmer with software services to create and manage the application interface including, hash generation, service message formatting, reply parsing, and time-stamp server selection.

"We are especially pleased that a European trust center, like EuroSignCard, has been able to move quickly to provide secure time stamps. We anticipate rapid growth of interest in our products as world markets demand critical, trusted third-party time stamping services," said Conrad Deeter, Business Development Director, DigiStamp.