Business monthly April 06   EDITOR'S NOTE COVER STORY EXECUTIVE LIFE VIEWPOINT IN PERSON SUBSCRIPTION FORM IN BRIEF MARKET WATCH ADVERTISING RATES IN DEPTH CORPORATE CLINIC Search Business Monthly | Back Issues

IN DEPTH
Yellow cabs take on black-and-whites	Rising prices forcing many to forgo meat
E-signiture ready to sign	Efforts continue to offload retail chains
Correction sends bourse into panic	Bank of alexandria on the block

e-signature ready to sign

by abdel aziz nosseir

a decade ago in egypt, it was virtually unheard of to use a credit card instead of cash, or e-mail instead of a letter. today, these applications are only the most basic tools in an increasingly technology-based world. as the result of a government initiative to give egypt further access to this electronic, efficient global community, individuals and organizations in egypt will soon be able to use electronic signature, or “e-signature.”

law 15/2004 regulating the use of e-signature in egypt was approved by the people’s assembly in april 2004. the law’s 30 articles lay the legislative groundwork for the use of e-signatures in civil, financial and administrative transactions. in doing so, it condones the use of the internet as a legally valid medium for transactions, obviating the need to sign documents physically. the new law also established the information technology industry development agency (itida) as the regulatory authority overseeing the use of e-signature in egypt.

when the law is fully implemented, e-signatures will make it much simpler to conduct international transactions, sherif hashim, executive vice president of itida, told business monthly. “we’re talking about using an e-signature as a substitute for a handwritten signature on electronic documents exchanged over computer networks.”

this could revolutionize the way people go about their daily lives. “at the moment, if an individual needs to conduct a simple transaction such as applying for a passport or driver’s license, filing tax returns, or any other official correspondence, he or she has to provide a handwritten signature to authenticate the document,” says hashim. he points out that copies of an identification card sometimes have to be attached to verify the identity of the signatory. in other cases, a party to a transaction must sign documents in front of officials in order to ensure the authenticity of the signature.

switching to e-signature will allow egyptians to conduct these transactions without having to be physically present, since the technology effectively mimics the individual’s signature in cyberspace. e-signatures can be used to exchange electronic documents with others or – as all transactions are monitored by a third party – to verify that transactions have actually occurred.

while an e-signature can be as simple as a scanned image of a handwritten signature sent as a .jpg e-mail attachment, a legally recognized e-signature uses complex technologies that combine mathematical processes, encryption and third-party verification to ensure confidentiality, integrity and instantaneous authentication. it should also permit non-repudiation – an industry term that means the sender cannot deny having signed and sent the document.

to execute an e-signature on a document, an individual inserts their personal e-signature card – a smart card with an embedded chip that resembles an atm card – into a card reader linked to their computer. once the document or application is filled out, the individual signs it by clicking a button and entering their smart card’s pin code. a unique private key securely stored on the smart card is used to encrypt the document data and generate the e-signature, which is attached to the document.

the document and signature are transmitted to the recipient’s computer, and can be read without any further action. however, the recipient is also given the software option of authenticating the document’s e-signature by acquiring the sender’s unique public key from a registered certification service provider (csp) [see sidebar] and using it to recalculate the e-signature from the data of the document received. if the resulting signature matches the sender’s attached signature, non-repudiation is established and the digital signature becomes legally binding, explains attorney tarek el marsafawy.

non-repudiation, which assures the document has been sent by the signatory and has not been altered, was deemed essential by the drafters of the e-signature law. “if the recipient or the other party to the contract can modify his or her copy, the signature is null and void,” says el marsafawy. “to have security and confidence, one must be sure that the other party to the transaction is following the regulations.”
csps operating under the watchful eye of itida will certify the authenticity of digital certificates, a “passport” that identifies the owner of the e-signature. “the digital certificate proves that a specific e-signature belongs to a specific individual or organization, so that counterparts can verify the identity of the message sender,” hashim explains. “it also proves that the signature is valid.”

though new to egypt, e-signatures are available in at least 20 other countries worldwide. globally, however, e-signature users are still relatively few. hashim attributes this lag to entrenched cultural habits – habits that will have to shift before most people accept the use of e-documents. he likens this to the slow and ongoing shift from cash to credit cards as the preference for people’s daily transactions.

in egypt, he says, back office employees could prove even more resistant to the concept than the public at large. “convincing people to use e-signature will be difficult,” he admits, “but having the recipients of these e-documents accept them will be an even bigger challenge.”

but it will certainly be in everyone’s interest to change, says hashim, explaining that the e-signature legislation will eventually allow egyptians to conduct a variety of transactions with government and private agencies without queuing up. while it will not be the first attempt to put government and commercial services online, it will lend more power to e-government and e-commerce websites by permitting a wider range of secure, authenticated transactions. “who wouldn’t want to finish all their bureaucratic work without standing in a line?” he says. “this is especially beneficial for people who need to get things done in other governorates or countries. moreover, e-signatures will allow people to access services around the clock.”

entities such as the notary public currently lack the technological capability to read and archive electronic documents. “they will need to have a workflow system based on e-signatures, which is not the case right now,” hashim says. “documents currently move from one office to another, with each official putting a handwritten signature on the same paper.”

this is about to change. a notary public office in cairo will be one of the first entities to implement e-signature technology. “all the equipment has been installed to make the dokki notary public office the first to use e-signature technology,” says it consultant alaa sobhy. the main challenge, however, will be training the staff to use it. “people do not like change. after using the paper document for decades and never using computers, it is even hard [to convince them] to use the computer’s mouse.”

omayma abdel maksoud, head of the notary public office in 15th of may city, is excited about the new technology. she says e-signature will offer a “revolutionary solution” for notary public offices as well as the courts and government authorities that register documents at the notary public. “you can only imagine the massive number of people we serve,” she says. “this [technology] can reduce time consumption by 90 percent, and ease procedures.”

official documents that have been electronically signed can be duplicated, archived and even sent to offices in other cities for duplication and archiving – all within a fraction of a second. “no one can really imagine the amount of time we spend retrieving documents,” she says. “i’d really like to believe that some day we’ll be able to do that by simply clicking a button.”

one of the sectors that stand to benefit most from the e-signature law is banking. rokiah radi, a legal consultant at commercial international bank (cib), says banks must embrace e-signature to keep apace with technological advancements in the international financial sector. the legislation addresses the security concerns that many banks have expressed. “the law grants enough legal guarantees to protect the use of the documents electronically signed from forgery as long as it is implemented by the standards mentioned in the law,” she says.

radi believes that e-signatures will have a significant impact on financial transactions in general, and banking transactions in particular. e-signatures offer a legal and secure substitute for handwritten signatures, allowing customers to conduct their banking operations from the privacy of their own homes or while traveling, 24 hours a day.

although itida is aware that security fears may hamper the use of e-signature at first, hashim says that the technology is far more secure than handwritten signatures, benefiting from sophisticated encryption and monitoring that prevents forgery. “breaking through an e-signature is extremely difficult; i would say impossible,” he says confidently.

only the coming months will tell how many users will make use of the new application. experts predict 50,000-100,000 users over the coming two years. that may not seem like much, but technology use has a way of snowballing. six years ago, egypt had virtually no mobile phone users. today some 12 million egyptians are using the technology and few can imagine life without it.

submit your comment

top