Belgian company Inventive Designers pioneers security technology for printed documents

Digitally signed printed documents remain authentic thanks to IntelliStamp

Antwerp, 15th May 2009 – Belgian company Inventive Designers, which specializes in developing innovative document software based on open standards, is introducing a new security solution for verifying digitally signed and printed documents. The software is called IntelliStamp and is available now all over the world.

Document streams

There are two kinds of document stream: one is the (traditional) paper stream and the other is the digital document stream. The government, along with the banking and insurance sectors and other private and public companies, is working more and more with digital documents. However, authenticated digital documents lose their legality once they are 'materialised' (printed out, faxed, etc). With IntelliStamp it is now possible to go from the digital stream to the paper stream and vice versa, without losing the authenticity of the document in question.

Sometimes a document just has to be printed out. Klaas Bals, CTO of Inventive Designers, explains: “Insurers have to send out thousands of policies every day. At the moment these are sent on paper through the post. It is far simpler and more efficient to deliver the policies to the policyholders over the internet. Policyholders can then print out their policies themselves. IntelliStamp ensures that policies, in both digital and printed form, are authentic and remain so. The advantages are clear: IntelliStamp offers greater certainty for policyholders as to the authenticity of the documents, and a substantial cost reduction for the insurer. In addition, IntelliStamp helps to prevent fraud.”

IntelliStamp has also been developed to fill the gaps in the digital chain. Many people print out digital documents for their own records at home and then delete them from their PCs, without realising that by doing so they are losing the authenticity of those documents. Official organisations (companies, banks and government bodies) are also still printing and sending a large number of documents by post, although previously this was merely a way of remaining fully compliant with the legal framework. Here, IntelliStamp can function as an extension of the digital signature. IntelliStamp allows end users to print out the document themselves, without losing its legality. This saves companies money on printing and postage.

How does it work?

IntelliStamp creates a bridge between digital and paper documents. The application 'reads' a digital document and creates an encrypted visual stamp, based on the content of the document and a digital certificate. The visual key is visible in printed form as one or several 2-D barcodes and can be easily scanned in order to verify the authenticity and origin of the document. After scanning, it is immediately possible to check whether the content of a document is authentic, ie whether the document has been correctly signed by the right authority and/or whether the content is unchanged.

Advantages of IntelliStamp

According to Klaas Bals, the technology can be applied to a multitude of sectors, both large and small scale: “Imagine, for example, customs checking transport documents and certificates of origin. With IntelliStamp, even electronic permits applied for through a digital process remain 'genuinely electronic', as it were, and do not lose their legal value when printed. Notarial deeds, birth certificates, marriage certificates, contracts, certified copies of diplomas, and so forth, can be stored digitally and no longer lose their authenticity when printed. What's more, thanks to this new solution, digitally signed contracts can be printed out by different people more than once, while the content is guaranteed to remain unchanged.”

Klaas Bals continues: “The advantages of the applications for IntelliStamp as a hybrid digital signature are numerous. The software offers a considerable time saving for the private sector, makes public sector counters fully digital by offering a legal framework for documents printed by citizens, allows customs officials to easily check forgeries, and makes it simple for courts to verify the authenticity of documents. Put simply, IntelliStamp offers a user-friendly and safe way of working with documents to people who keep paper documents.”

 About Inventive Designers (http://www.inventivedesigners.com/)

Inventive Designers builds software solutions which enable companies to deliver personalized customer communications through various channels such as the Internet, print, e-mail, fax, etc. The solutions are all built making use of open standards and can be put to use in any IT environment due to their platform independence

Inventive Designers, founded in 1994, is active on 6 continents in over 30 countries and 34 US states. Inventive Designers is based in Antwerp. The company’s 700 clients – resulting in over 65.000 end users – are supported by a global network of resellers and partners. Inventive Designers’ clients include companies such as Dexia (BE), Axa (BE), RVP (BE), RVA (BE), Porsche (DE), Total (FR), Winterthur (BE), Securitas (BE), United Nations (US), US Postal (US), SunCorp (AUS), Siemens (DE) and Staples (BE).

Inventive Designers is an active member of AIIM, XPlor International and the AFP Colour Consortium and participates in numerous XL working groups of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the international organisation responsible for developing and defining open IT standards. Inventive Designers has already won various national and international awards, among others the ICT Innovation Award of Banking & Finance, the AIIM 2006 Best Practice Award for Banking and Financial Services, an ‘Honourable Mention’ at Xplor’s ‘Innovator of the Year’ award (2006), the 2005 Platinum European Seal of Excellence at CeBIT, Trends Business Gazelle (2003 and 2005), ‘Best Performer’ at De Leeuw van de Export (2003), Springbok 2003 and IBM’s ‘All Star Developer’ award. The firm has also built up a long-term relationship with IBM development labs and research groups in Rochester, Minnesota (USA).

Inventive Designers, Klaas Bals, CTO, T: +32 38 21 01 70