Monthly Archives: juillet 2022

By Meyer Mechanic, Founder and CEO at Vaultie with additional contributions made by members of DIACC’s Outreach Expert Committee.

In the 22 years since electronic signatures were made legal for business use in Canada, they’ve become a mainstay of how we interact with our customers. As they’ve gained familiarity, use, and traction, there has been a group of companies (that are becoming smaller) that wouldn’t adopt the technology. About 4 years ago, I started asking what barriers are preventing sensitive documents such as wills, financial instruments, notarized documents, and major contracts from being digitally signed (as opposed to “wet-ink” signatures) and what protections would need to be in place for these types of documents to go that route. 

What does the future hold for sensitive digital contracts? What is in use today?

Not all signatures are created equal, and different products have different features. For simplicity, let’s break electronic signatures into three categories: E-signature, digital signature, and credentialed signature (Digital ID).

What are they?

E-signatures – These were the first iterations acceptable in court, although are no longer accepted in some provinces. A simple electronic indicator that can be attributed to the user. This could be as simple as typing your name in a box, adding a jpeg, or clicking to produce an image to imitate how your name would look when written with a pen. The precedent law on this is actually that the footer of an email could be enough to consider something electronically signed.

Digital signature – A digital signature uses a combination of public and private keys to issue certificates with encrypted claims that could be attributed to a document. When signing a document with a digital signature, information about the session could be recorded, such as what email address the user was logged in from or when they issued this certificate. All of this information could be presented as evidence that you’ve signed a document. You likely use this type everyday without even knowing it, it’s common for financial services, real estate, and even everyday business. These signatures sacrifice a little bit of privacy in order to create some more evidence as to who has signed.

Credentialed signature (Digital ID) – A signatory verifies their ID (usually government-issued) against a biometric, and a credential is created for them by a credential issuer, which is usually an identity and access management company, or the integrated signature provider company. That credential can then be applied to a series of digital assets (mostly contracts) to verify that a live person signed a document. That credential may include other permissions as well, such as authentication from additional issuers based on a series of attributes of the signatory (e.g., job title, professional designation, educational status, etc.). This expands the reach of a traditional digital signature in two key ways. First, the verified ID and biometric checks expand assurances of the signature to the person on the other side of the screen, who was present at the time of signing. Second, with a Credentialed signature we can prove that the signature hasn’t been subject to fraud and the signer is, in fact, who they claim to be. This allows the document to be universally verified which means that a party who was not in the room when a document was signed can still ascertain who, specifically, signed a document and that it hadn’t been altered. This type of signature is only starting to take hold, but is already in use for financial assets, both tangible and digital, art, and many situations where there is a higher risk of fraud.

Future of Digital ID in contracts

As more sensitive types of documents begin to go digital, higher levels of assurances are becoming imperative as methods of resisting fraud attempts. While an E-signature may be an appropriate tool for a retail business with lower stakes, there is growing adoption of Credentialed Signatures for high-value sales such as securities, precious metals, legal contracts, real estate, digital assets, and more. We are already seeing the adoption of these standards in multiparty financial agreements, where a customer and a third-party agent may agree to a transaction, but the funder is not present in the room. The application of a digital ID in these cases protects all parties involved since the funder can verify every aspect of a contract without having to ever meet the customer and the customer has a verifiable document that could be easily proven should anything ever go awry. The use of Credentialed Signatures protects the asset and can confirm Know Your Customer (KYC)/Anti-Money Laundering (AML) assurances while helping the signer claim ownership by creating direct connections between them and the asset. We see this niche growing substantially over the next five years and better-linking people to their digital worlds.    

By Michael Magrath, Managing Director, Digital Identity at Kuma with additional contributions by members of DIACC’s Outreach Expert Committee.

If there is one industry that everyone participates in, it’s healthcare. Believe it or not, Canada’s healthcare system is far more progressive than many other nations, but there is a lot of room for improvement. Our patient experience can and will be improved as the sector continues down its digital transformation journey. Identity management and in general, digital identity, will be a major factor for healthcare providers and patients alike. This blog will focus on patients, because after all, you are one.

Patient identity is at the centre of healthcare. Treating the wrong patient by misidentification, has led to everything from allergic reactions to death. Indeed, providing high quality care to the right patient is paramount.

While everything seems to be going digital today, healthcare is rooted in the offline, physical world, and full transformation to digital is a long and arduous journey. Provincial governments have done arguably a respectable job enabling us to prove who we are via our health insurance cards presented at point-of-care. The card includes our name, date of birth, photograph, provincial health card number along with physical security features like holograms to thwart the production and use of fake cards.

But what about in the digital world? As good as our health insurance cards are at point-of-care, they do not prove who we are online. The pandemic only magnified these shortcomings. At the moment, there are wide-scale social engineering and phishing attacks designed to trick individuals to share their online account login credentials to takeover accounts, access company files and assets, drain bank accounts, and create false identities, to name a few. In 2022, we need a secure, voluntary, and privacy-enhancing digital identity in order to cease the use of passwords for login to protect our digital lives.

A digital identity is a digital representation that uniquely identifies a person presented to service providers, such as a physician’s office, hospital, bank, or government agency when accessing online services. Like a driver license, possessing a digital identity is not a government mandate and should be a choice for an individual, but it does make life easier and more secure when transacting business online.

Changes are coming which will significantly improve our lives as patients. Have you ever lost a paper prescription or had to wait for the pharmacist to call your doctor because their handwriting is illegible? There is a better way – electronic prescriptions sent by your physician to the pharmacy are commonplace in many countries, and even mandated in some.

Those in the “sandwich generation,” caring for themselves, their children, and their elderly parent(s) know the frustrations of coordinating care with multiple healthcare providers. Patient portals have added convenience for Americans to schedule appointments, view test results and medical records, and will soon benefit all Canadians. To protect patient privacy and security, healthcare organizations need high assurance that the person accessing the portal is who they claim they are. Digital identity can enable all of the above, and if you don’t use one already, a digital identity wallet may be in your future.

Digital identity wallets are just what they sound like. They are analogous to physical wallets in that they contain digital versions of the wallet owner’s identity proofs and related assets. These assets typically include digital versions of familiar physical cards and documents (e.g., driver’s license, proof of insurance, health cards, etc.). They are highly secure and provide consumers with the ability to protect their privacy and have control over their information by sharing what they choose with an organization. The example often used for a digital or mobile driver license is entering a nightclub. The bouncer at the door only needs to know that the person is of legal drinking age. They do not need the person’s name and home address. To protect privacy and security, the digital wallet holder can share only their age with the bouncer. When was your child’s last tetanus shot? It could be a few clicks away, securely stored in your digital wallet accessible from your mobile device.

As we can see the light at the end of the dark and deadly pandemic tunnel, life will noticeably change. One positive change will be our online safety and security. With Web3 on the near-term horizon, having and utilizing digital identities will be more important than ever for all Canadians.