Arcot, leader in fraud prevention, strong authentication and e-Document security, today announced that its SignFort digital signing solution has been certified as compliant with the SAFE-BioPharma™ digital identity and signature standard. Arcot's SignFort allows electronic documents to be signed with SAFE-BioPharma 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-BioPharma credential. The SAFE-BioPharma digital identity and signature standard is managed by SAFE-BioPharma Association, comprising the world's largest biopharmaceutical companies.

"The SAFE-BioPharma standard defines a technical and legal framework for establishing trust in digital identities and signatures. Arcot SignFort offers a convenient, secure, and compliant way to apply these digital signatures to electronic documents," said R. ‘Doc' Vaidhyanathan, vice president of product management for Arcot. Arcot solutions were used by Astra Zeneca when they became the first company to send digitally-signed submissions to the FDA.

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.

With SignFort, individuals only need to have Adobe® Acrobat® or Adobe Reader® software to be able to apply digital signatures that are compliant with the SAFE-BioPharma standard. 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 cryptographic camouflage authentication technology embedded into Adobe Acrobat/Reader provides enhanced security for digitally signing electronic documents.

SAFE-BioPharma digital signatures are recognized and accepted by the FDA and are fully compliant with EMEA requirements for qualified electronic signatures.

"Arcot SignFort’s compliance with the SAFE-BioPharma standard means that our member companies can rely on Arcot SignFort for valid and legal digitally-signed documents. This option will help them streamline business and regulatory approval processes and operations," said Mollie Shields-Uehling, president and CEO, SAFE-BioPharma Association.

About Arcot

Arcot authentication and digital signing solutions make online access safe for millions of consumer, enterprise and ecommerce users. With Arcot solutions, organizations can automatically and transparently deploy stronger authentication and digital signatures without changing user behavior or deploying expensive hardware bridging the gap between cost, convenience, and security. Arcot fraud prevention, strong authentication, and e-Document security solutions are delivered on-premise or on-demand as an Arcot hosted service. Arcot solutions comply with U.S. and international security standards including 3-D Secure, CardSpace, FFIEC, OpenID, SAFE-BioPharma, and SAML.

For more information, visit http://www.arcot.com.

SAFE-BioPharma™ is a trademark of SAFE-BioPharma Association. Any use of this trademark requires approval from SAFE-BioPharma Association