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high-volume document sealing service

Cloud-based certificates for automated sealing

The Entrust Signing Automation Service issues and hosts your digital certificate’s private keys for document signing, allowing you to automate document sealing workflows without managing keys and secure hardware. eIDAS Qualified Certificates for Advanced Seals are available.

The service is designed for integrating into applications and platforms compatible with PKCS#11.

What is a digital seal?

While a digital signature represents a natural person (an individual), a digital seal represents a legal person (an organization). Digital seals ensure that a document is tamper-proof and carries your verified organization's name. 

Entrust can provide trusted certificates for document sealing, as well as European eIDAS Qualified Certificates to generate eIDAS Advanced Seals via the Entrust Signing Automation Service.

Benefits

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Keep ownership and control of your content

Trusted digital seals on documents provide real guarantees of ownership and integrity, as well as non-repudiation when combined with timestamping.

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Built for integration

The signing service is accessed via our Entrust Signing Automation Client, which is supported by major PDF tools and any PKCS#11-compatible environment.

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A full service without hardware management

We provide and maintain everything for you: the HSM, the sealing software, the publicly-trusted certificates, and public timestamping and OCSP services.

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Aligned with EU eIDAS

Entrust is a European Qualified Trust Service Provider and can deliver eIDAS Qualified Certificates for Advanced Seals via the Signing Automation Service. Find Entrust in the EU Trust List.

Architecture

The Entrust Signing Automation Service can be called to generate a digital seal from a hash value that is sent by your document application. This seal is then embedded back into your document by your application.

A hash value is a fixed-length series of digits representing the content of your document. The Entrust Signing Automation Service never receives any sensitive information or intellectual property.

The following diagram illustrates a typical integration of the Signing Automation Service. It does not include the optional timestamping and OCSP flows.

Signing automation service architecture illustration

Setup

The Signing Automation Service is accessed by a PKCS#11 client that we provide and which must be installed on your application.

In order to set up the signing service, we will provide you with a license to access a signing service where you will be able to generate a CSR.

If you are a new customer, we will also enroll you for an Entrust Certificate Services account, and your Organization will be verified. Once this is done, you will be able to order your publicly-trusted Document Signing certificate and add its public key to the signing service. And voilà! You can start integrating your signing service to your application.

Integrations

The Entrust Signing Automation service is guaranteed to be compatible with the following services:

  • Entrust Java Toolkit
  • iText 5/7 (Java)
  • Oracle/Open JDK

You are free to test the integration of our service to your custom environment, provided that it supports the PKCS#11 standard.

Features

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Centralized Service

Delegate all Organization-signing activities to a central service that is entirely integrated to your existing applications and workflows.

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High Volume

The Entrust Signing Automation Service was built for bulk signing, and will enable you to generate thousands of seals per year.

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Quick Deployment

The service is deployed in the Cloud and accessible via a PKCS#11 client.

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nShield HSMs

The service leverages FIPS 140-2 Level 3 HSMs from our own datacenter.

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Timestamping

Every seal generated can also be timestamped with our RFC 3161-compliant timestamping service.

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LTV (Long-Term Validation)

Leverage our TSA (Timestamping Authority) and OCSP (Online Certificate Status Protocol) services to create Long Term Validation (LTV) seals and extend your seals’ lifetime.

PDF Document Sealing Use Cases by Industry

Healthcare

The pandemic has significantly increased the need to find alternatives to face-to-face appointments and paper documents delivery. With this digitization of medical paperwork, document fraud is taking a new turn. Automatically sealing PDF documents from the moment they are being generated can help mitigate fraud and abuse. 

Common Use Cases: 

  • Medical prescriptions 
  • Medical certificates 
  • Lab test results 
  • Patient records 
  • And many more

Banking

Customer satisfaction is a crucial indicator of success for banks. Being innovative can really give you an edge, and the industry has never relied so much on digital banking to guarantee business continuity. Adding digital seals to all of your customer-facing banking documents will reinforce confidence and trust in your transactions – and guarantee their integrity. 

Common Use Cases: 

  • Bank statements 
  • Terms and conditions 
  • Portfolio performances 
  • Yearly results 
  • And many more

Human Resources

Many HR documents are used by employees as justification pieces for many life milestones: applying for jobs, getting mortgages, calculating taxes, etc. In today’s world, it’s becoming crucial to ensure that a digital version of a document can be perceived as reliable and trusted as the paper version. A digital seal provides an extra layer of guarantee on its authenticity and integrity. 

Common Use Cases: 

  • Permanent, temporary, and part-time contracts 
  • Performance documents 
  • Compensation documents 
  • Payslips 
  • Management records 
  • Exit documents 
  • And many more

Higher Education

Distance learning is progressing as students get more and more equipped for online courses. With digital seals and digital timestamping, it’s possible to prove the authenticity and integrity of a diplomas and other digital documents used in educational settings. 

Common Use Cases: 

  • Diplomas
  • Acceptance letters 
  • Submitted papers 
  • Students transcripts 
  • Completed onboarding forms 
  • And many more

Government

Every state and country has to deal with a large amount of official paperwork that citizens need for their life and business activities. With the pandemic accelerating the need for alternatives to face-to-face meetings and paper signatures, a fully digitized citizen experience will need to include digital documents as well, without losing trust in the process. Digital seals carry proof of authenticity and integrity, making them even more secure than their paper counterparts. 

Common Use Cases: 

  • Tax documents 
  • Drivers’ license documents 
  • Certificates 
  • Public statistics 
  • Bills, laws, and regulation texts 
  • Archives 
  • And many more