Contracts go digital right to end

ON-LINE COMMUNICATION: key system does away with printing and signing of deals

City firm Hobson Audley has countered concerns about the security of its on-line communications by investing in an e-mail security system that ensures the complete confidentiality of digital transactions.The 13-partner firm has implemented a public key infrastructure (PKI), designed by e-security company Trustis, which Hobson Audley helped found three years ago.

It enables digital signatures to be used, with date and time stamping, as proof that the e-mail reached the intended recipient - and not a third party.

Max Audley, a corporate finance partner at Hobson Audley, said he became increasingly concerned about unauthorised parties gaining access to confidential or sensitive documents.

'We needed to implement a cost-effective solution that ensured documentation could not be intercepted,' he said.

'Now we have a system that can keep all information secure and we use it as a selling point.' The PKI gives the firm the ability to issue its own digital certificates, which authenticate an individual or device.

A certificate enables the encryption of e-mail until it reaches its intended destination, where it can be opened by a 'keyholder' with a recognised digital signature.

Trustis managing director Chris Swinbank said: 'We provide a service that ensures an e-mail is sent in confidence from individual to individual, as opposed to server to server.'The Electronic Communications Act 2000 has validated digital signatures as legally binding, so now a contracted party can be held to a transaction that they agreed to on-line (see below).

Mr Audley said: 'Whereas previously a transaction had to be completed by printing out an e-mail, signing and faxing it to the parties concerned, now the entire contract can be tied up digitally.' Mr Audley said the firm had helped form Trustis because 'we had various technical clients who identified the need to mix law with technology'.

Since then, Trustis has branched out into banking and local government work, and only entered the legal world last year.

Mr Swinbank said Trustis can 'build, package, install and give training on' PKI for a firm within four to six weeks.Andrew Towler