Digital Signature

Thanks to its integration with specific applications, Brick platform enables to use digital signatures and validation marks. In fact, documents saved in Brick can be digitally signed, in full compliance with the Italian law.
A digital signature can be described as the electronic equivalent of a traditional signature on paper, with the same legal value. It is permanently associated with its document, which is enriched by information that testify:

Integrity: guarantee that nobody has tampered with the document after it had been originally subscribed.
Authenticity: guarantee on the identity of the person who signed the document.
No disclaim: the author cannot disclaim the document that he had already signed.
Legal value: an electronic document with a digital signature has the same legal value than a paper document signed by hand.

The digital signature is the result of an IT process that enables the signatory to prove the authenticity of the document and the recipient to verify its integrity. This tool exploits the potential of the asymmetric keys (double-key cryptography) which implies that the owner is given two unequivocal keys: one of them is private, used and known only by the owner; the other one is public and it is made know and available through the certificate released by the issuing certifier.
An electronic document signed with one of the two keys (i.e. a coded document), can be made clear (i.e. decipherable and certified) only by using the other key.

The digital signature is based on electronic certificates issued by authorities called "certifiers" which have the responsibility of:

Assuring the unequivocal association between the digital signature and its owner.
Publishing a list of the certificates of the public keys belonging to those owners who benefited from their certification assistance.
Keeping an updated list of pending or invalidated certificates.

To check the validity of a given digital certificate, it is enough to visit the website of the certifier authority to receive information about the signatory of a digital document. Therefore, the digital signature acquires a capital importance since an electronic document with a digital signature has the same legal value than a paper document signed by hand.

Validation Mark

The validation mark of an electronic document consists in the creation of a digital signature of a document associated with an information of time and date. The validation mark certifies in an unequivocal way the precise date and hour in which the document has been generated, transmitted or filed. This gives the possibility of:

Assigning a specific and indisputable date to a document
Fixing a definite reference of time for subscription
Extending the validity of the document.