Arcot, SAFE-BioPharma Team on Digital Sigs

FT. LEE, N.J. and SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- SAFE-BioPharma Association and Arcot Systems today announced that Arcot’s SignFort now supports use of the SAFEä digital identity and signature standard, enabling SAFE user credentials to be stored centrally on a network and accessed from any location at any time. Arcot’s SignFort allows electronic documents to be signed with SAFE digital signatures from any location without tokens, smart cards or software stored on desktops. Further, the SignFort application provides strong authentication of the user before allowing access to the SAFE credential. SAFE-BioPharma comprises the world’s largest biopharmaceutical companies.

“The SAFE model defines a technical and legal framework for establishing trust in digital identities and signatures, and Arcot’s SignFort offers a convenient and secure way to apply SAFE signatures to electronic documents,” said R. ‘Doc’ Vaidhyanathan, vice president of product management for Arcot. “With SignFort, individuals only need to have Adobe® Acrobat® or Adobe Reader® software to be able to apply SAFE-compliant digital signatures.”

The potential savings from replacing ink signatures and paper documents are significant. The pharmaceutical industry estimates that approximately 40% of annual research and development costs in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries are attributed to paper-based business processes, representing $9 billion in the United States, alone.

Arcot SignFort and Adobe Reader streamline the process of digitally signing documents allowing employees, partners and customers to sign documents in an easy, scalable and cost-efficient manner. SignFort enhances audit capabilities of signing operations by maintaining detailed logs. Arcot’s patented authentication technology embedded into Adobe Reader 8 provides enhanced security for signing electronic documents.

“Together, Adobe and Arcot have revolutionized digital signing because the user no longer needs to install additional software or provision digital IDs to their PC,” said John Landwehr, director of Security Solutions at Adobe. “Now, the pharmaceutical industry relying on SAFE digital credentials can take advantage of roaming digital IDs to rapidly move away from paper-based business processes.”

Arcot Systems