We’ve got massive news for you! We’ve just updated our Validation feature in the portal and it’s now a qualified service. Validation being a qualified service, provides you with more assurance that e-signatures and e-seals on your documents are truly valid. Dive in to learn more.
What is a validation service and when do you need it?
According to eIDAS regulation, validation is a supplementary service for electronic signatures and seals. It shows whether the signature or seal was valid from the time of their creation up until the moment of validation. In other words, you will need to validate already e-signed or e-sealed documents received from other parties to make sure the signatures or seals in them are valid.
What has changed in Dokobit portal?
Last year we underwent audits by accredited auditors and became one of a few eIDAS certified qualified e-signatures and e-seals validation service providers in the world. Validation of e-signatures and e-seals being a regulated area, binds the Qualified Trust Service Providers to hold actual responsibility for the results provided in the validation.
So what does that mean?
We replaced a previous non-qualified validation service with the qualified one. A qualified validation service meets the requirements of eIDAS regulation which is ensured by the authorities and is bound to ensure a bunch of things: that cryptographic signature or seal validations are successful, that there are no limits applied to signatures and seals, as well as signer’s authentication, that validation is carried out based on eIDAS regulation and ETSI standards.
Meanwhile a non-qualified validation service provider has not undergone an official process needed to ensure compliance with eIDAS requirements, meaning that the validations are carried out without any validation policy and no liability is applied to the results provided. Therefore, in case there is a dispute in court and you provide a validation report by a non-qualified service provider as an evidence trying to prove that at a certain time the signatures or seals were valid, it would be questioned and the judge would decide the final outcome.
Sometimes it might happen (or you might have even faced it yourself) that different validation tools show different results – one says signatures are valid and the other says they’re not, or similar. Different results used to raise questions which provider and result should be trusted. Well, from now on you can fully trust us to provide a legitimate validation result even if other systems state otherwise.
We introduced qualified validation liability levels. As a Qualified Trust Service Provider we hold full responsibility for the validation results we provide and offer a liability assurance for you in case of discrepancies. This means that you can choose between different liability assurance levels according to your needs. In the portal you will find two levels: Basic liability and Advanced liability.
Basic liability is right for you if minimum assurance is enough, usually in cases when the validity of signatures or seals is not likely to raise disputes. Basic liability validations are liable for up to EUR 100 per validation report. This is a totally free option available for you anytime.
Advanced liability is more suitable if you want more assurance for the validity of signatures or seals, usually in cases when the documents are of higher value. Advanced liability validations are liable for up to EUR 10 000 per validation report. This option is only available for Business and Enterprise plan users and each advanced liability validation costs 0,5 EUR + VAT. Nevertheless, you will always be able to choose between the two options depending on the importance of your document. E.g., maybe for validating a received vacation request basic liability will be enough, meanwhile, validating signed investment agreement received from your partners would more likely put you at ease when validated with an advanced liability option. Either way, you are free to choose each time you need to validate a document!
In case the two provided liability options are not enough, Premium liability for up to EUR 100 000 is available for Enterprise plan users under separate agreement. Contact us to learn more.
If you have more questions about the validations, feel free to check our compiled FAQ.