TMCnet News
UAE residents can sign digitally with ID cards [Gulf News (United Arab Emirates)](Gulf News (United Arab Emirates) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Abu Dhabi: The UAE residents can put digital signatures on many sort of documents using their national ID cards thanks to the integration of ID cards with Windows operating system of Microsoft. ID card holders can generate government-validated digital signatures in all their Microsoft Office and PDF (portable document format) documents. The biggest advantage of the ID Card integration in Windows is the ability for the Windows and Microsoft Office Suite to use the digital credentials available in the ID Card, an official spokesman of Emirates Identity Authority told Gulf News on Saturday. Thus any Word, Excel, PowerPoint or PDF documents that use the Windows Trust Services can directly use the ID Card to generate the digital signatures using the PKI [public-key infrastructure] certificates available in the ID Card. The fact that these certificates are protected by the user PIN means that only a valid card holder can digitally sign the document. Thus circulars, official letters, forms etc. can be directly signed within the Windows operating system without the need of any other software. Asked how a digital signature reflects on a document and how can a layman identify it, the spokesman said : "Any digital signature is embedded into the documents using the native signature features (as in Microsoft Office Insert Signature or Acrobat PDF Sign functions). The document when opened by its application (for example Word or Excel or PowerPoint) recognises the presence of a signature in the document and informs the user. A click on the information displayed would further provide details of the signer and the signature," he said. (c) 2014 Al Nisr Publishing LLC . All rights reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info). |