Protect the integrity and authenticity of data and people

You are a lawyer. Your profession requires you to maintain confidential relationships with your clients, partners and associates. A typical feature of your profession is that you handle sensitive, confidential information that requires data about your clients or other third parties to be protected, as well as protection in the sense of the integrity and authenticity of this information and of the person handling it. Here, identity theft is also a risk you have to protect yourself against (this risk may manifest itself in the use of email addresses that are sufficiently similar or even identical).

As all information in your profession is destined to be shared, exchanged and transmitted, what are the key elementary risks to be guarded against?

  • First of all a lawyer must be able to assure his clients as well as all other third parties with whom he exchanges information that he is indeed the person he claims to be. As a client, I require my lawyer to take all necessary measures, especially when exchanging information electronically by email for example, to gain my trust and assure me that my personal data is handled securely.
  • Next, any document produced, whether it be a document stored on a disk or a document that is circulated, must be protected against any inappropriate alterations; for example, it is easy to understand the importance of assuring a third party who receives a draft contract to sign that the total specified has not been changed (voluntarily or involuntarily). Another example: assuring the client that the invoice received matches the lawyer's account and bank and not that of some sort of identity thief, etc.
  • Sign an email, sign the attachments, or both?

Lawyers are encouraged to sign their emails with a certificate; the aim is to provide assurance as to the authenticity of the message sender. When someone sends this kind of signed email to a third party, this third party could then forward all or part of the email, including any attachments. At that point, the signature disappears... as does the desired objective of ensuring authenticity and integrity.

As well as signatures in emails, signatures in attachments are an integral part of the documents sent and, as such, continue to appear in all subsequent email exchanges, including copies and forwarding to third parties.

Therefore, ideally, you should combine: a message signature in the body of the email AND signatures in each of the attachments.

Furthermore, you would like to make logical improvements to the efficacy of your work and reduce administrative tasks as much as possible, for example:

  • Reduce the costs associated with sending papers, such as invoices, conclusions and contracts (and rather than using paper, sending invoices by email while ensuring the integrity and authenticity of these invoices, etc.)
  • Reduce the costs associated with the work that is necessary when handling paper: for example, when five people each have to initial every page of a 200-page document, etc.
  • You would be ready to generate electronic signatures, but fear that this will be cumbersome, complex and costly.

We have a solution that is tailored to your needs as a lawyer

e-Sign it™ is the perfect solution for lawyers, and responds to the points mentioned above. It was developed with the help of advice from practising lawyers, whom we consulted to guide us in creating the functions and ergonomics of the product. The result is a piece of software that is extremely simple for both you and your secretary to use.

Our product offers you complete flexibility in the choice of signature method

• signing with your existing 'standard' certificates or with certificates provided to you by us;

• signing with 'qualified' certificates provided to you by us (or alternatively, using the certificates in your eID card for free).

Those of you who do not yet have a certificate can be supplied with one by The eID Company, since we are a competent certification authority (and our prices are highly competitive), either for yourself as a physical person, or for your company as a moral person.

Hence, you can sign a document or group of documents in two clicks. For those of you with less IT experience, we have developed an extremely simple drag & drop signature method.

The software is free, and you are not charged for a licence. You only pay for the signatures you use (there is a prepay option, as well as a postpay and invoice option). Any certificates provided by The eID Company are also charged per unit, at highly competitive prices. What's more, you have the advantage of a Belgian supplier with an integrated solution that is simple and above all practical to use.

Would you like to test a free demonstration version of E-Sign it™ or receive a tailor-made quote? Contact us here.