DocumentSign allows Bodycote testing experts to digitally certify electronic documents containing test results

(30/06/2008)

GlobalSign has been selected by Bodycote, one of the world's largest suppliers of Testing and Thermal Processing services, to secure its critical test data and reports using GlobalSign's DocumentSign(tm) services.

Based on the Adobe Certified Document Services platform, Bodycote Testing Group is a supplier of testing services with over 115 laboratories in 24 countries that processes thousands of test data and reports. The diverse spectrum of industries in which Bodycote operates demands compliance with an increasing number of regulatory requirements, especially in the Health Sciences market such as CFR21 Part 11. Coupled with the necessity to innovate away from expensive, lengthy and unscalable paper based processes and to offer more cost effective wide ranging services to its multi-tiered customer base, the obvious choice was to move to electronic business processes and test reports.

Bodycote Testing Group needed a solution with a simple and effective method for the end customer (i.e. the party reliant on the test results) to be able to transparently check the document's authenticity and integrity. Bodycote has a large international network of experts that need to independently approve test results, and ultimately tie the certified results to a specific laboratory further down the chain of reliance. This meant a requirement for a highly distributable and scalable system to provide its experts, clients and clients' customers with the means to easily certify test result documents.

DocumentSign allows Bodycote testing experts to digitally certify electronic documents containing test results. These certified documents cannot be amended and cryptographically bind the identity of the certifying party, and a timestamp, to the very document itself.

The Portable Document Format (PDF) was chosen as the preferred file format because of the ease at which anyone can read a PDF document (there have been 800 million deployments of Adobe PDF reader). However, standard PDFs do not ensure the document is guaranteed from unauthorized tampering, and neither do they bind the author's identity to the document itself. For assurances of authenticity, integrity and authorship, GlobalSign's DocumentSign solution was needed.

DocumentSign meets Bodycote's requirements by utilizing the Certified Document Services functionality already available in the millions of deployments of Adobe PDF reader -additional software downloads by the document recipient are not required. Bodycote test results are converted to PDF and certified by adding a Certifying Signature via the DocumentSign USB security token. When viewed by the document recipient, a prominent "blue ribbon" is displayed within Adobe Reader. The blue ribbon gives information on the security status, such as whether the document has been amended after being certified, shows who certified the document and, based on a trusted time-source, when the document was certified (allowing documents to maintain their secure status and timestamp even when stored within an archive system).

The simplicity of no additional download or configuration for the document recipients ensures that documents certified are easily trusted by the many levels of stakeholders reliant upon the findings of the report.

"Bodycote has been working with GlobalSign for some time to help us meet our internal authentication requirements for secure access control through its digital certificates, so it was the natural choice for GlobalSign to help us provide external authentication capabilities to our electronic test reports." said Alan Slater, Head of IS & IT Architecture, Bodycote. "The DocumentSign services our security requirements but is also instantly deployable and very scalable - essential factors for rolling out a solution that can be easily understood by every person in the reliance chain. For our clients' customers, they simply open the test results in their PDF reader."

Related topics:  Application and software security   Data management and data security 

Print version | Email to a friend | Related articles

Data breaches: Trends, costs and best practices gives you all the latest information on securing personal and corporate data, key recommendations for immediate action to improve data security, and how to respond to data breaches.

Other Security news and resources