Estonia Adopts GuardTime Digital Signatures

GuardTime creator of the Keyless Signature technology used to provide indisputable proof of time, origin, and integrity for electronic data, today announced that the Estonia Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications signed a memorandum of co-operation, according to which Estonia will start looking for opportunities to implement digital signatures in e-state information systems.

"GuardTime’s technology allows documents to be signed easily and securely, making forgeries and changing an already signed document without the signer’s consent impossible," said the Estonian Minister of Economic Affairs and Communications Juhan Parts. "Estonia’s ambition is to be the most secure e-states in the world and GuardTime provides significant alternatives in the realization of Estonian public sector security measures," Parts added.

The digital timestamp technology was developed by Estonian scientists AhtoBuldas and MärtSaarepera. GuardTime provides a mathematically based digital signature service that proves authenticity of documents and data. GuardTime’s technology is already used by companies both in and outside of Estonia, but Estonia is progressive with its information technology and is the first country in the world to adopt Keyless Signatures in the public sector.

According to GuardTime Estonia CEO Raul Vahisalu, cracking digital timestamps is mathematically impossible and signatures cannot be forged or changed without the author’s consent. "These reasons make it a perfect data protection solution for countries, which have to keep their data secured on one hand, but also make it accessible to citizens. We are very keen to start co-operation," said Vahisalu.

The first Estonian public sector organization working on implementing GuardTime’s signature is the National Archive of Estonia. "For long-term storage, ensuring authenticity is one of the key issues," said Lauri Leht, head of the National Archive’s digital preservation bureau. "Implementing timestamps for digitized documents coming into the archive and signing internal materials gives an objective proof that the files have not been changed by unauthorized users," added Leht.

GuardTime’s digital signature can be verified by a code published in the Financial Times that contains a hash value, date and time record. In Estonia, GuardTime’s technology has already been adopted by SEB Bank.

GuardTime’s founders invented an algorithm that mathematically proves the time, location and integrity of electronic data at rest and in motion. GuardTime’s Keyless Signatures enable enterprises to switch to a cloud compute model with confidence, maintaining an independent audit trail of all data and related activities while complying with regulatory and legal admissibility requirements.

About GuardTime:
GuardTime was founded with the goal of solving one of the biggest problems in computing: how to be sure electronic data is authentic. GuardTime's Keyless Signatures provide proof of origin and that not a single bit of the data has changed since a specific point in time. The verification of the signatures can be done offline without reliance on keys, secrets, or the existence of a trusted third party. GuardTime's mission is to change the world to one where Keyless Signatures are ubiquitous and a natural part of the everyday data lifecycle, whether on disk, in transit, or in the Cloud. The company was recently selected as co-winner of the Innotribe $100K Start-Up Challenge, honoring the company as one of the world's most promising financial technology start-ups.

Contact:
Raul Vahisalu, CEO
GuardTime Estonia
Tallinn, Estonia
+372 509 0385