Last year brought a breakthrough in the market of trust services

Digital transformation is among the areas most impacted by the pandemic. The barriers that neither changes in the way customers use services nor tables showing millions in savings have been able to break so far have cracked under the strain of the unique economic situation we have been facing. In the times of social distancing it turned out that the technology that allows to run business without paper contracts, signatures, etc. is ready, but we need to focus on its proper implementation, integration of processes and education of companies and institutions in this area.

Market situation

In many areas of life, the digital revolution had already been well advanced before the outbreak of the pandemic. In Poland a particularly high level of digitization had been demonstrated in the financial market. Additionally, the measures taken by the public administration led to an increase in the number of citizens using a trusted profile – a public e-identification tool – and in the number of available public e-services. Currently, digitization is even being embraced by the human resources industry as they explore methods for signing contracts remotely while still complying with the Civil Code. The number of trust service providers operating within the legal framework defined by the EU regulation on electronic identification and trust services, the so-called eIDAS, had been growing steadily across Europe.
On the other hand, despite the fact that electronic document circulation was already being employed in the internal workflow of some companies, this did not translate into secure and reliable exchanges between individual companies and lacked a cross-border character.

One way path

In the period from March to September 2020, when the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic were felt most severely, many businesses and government entities were forced to carry out accelerated digital processes. Such a situation has not only intensified the already existing trend of moving towards remote communication or work, but has also forced the digitization in the field of transactions – declarations of will, identification or signing contracts. The leap we have made in implementing paperless solutions over a few months is not of years, but it seems that we have gained a lot of momentum and in 2-3 years we will be much further ahead than we had thought before the pandemic. Stopping the COVID-19 pandemic will not reverse this trend, as companies that have invested in digitization both in management and in customer service are gaining a competitive advantage. This in turn will force the rest of the market participants to abandon traditional forms of business.

It is important to remember, however, that due to the small amount of time available for the transformation of processes in organizations they were often underdeveloped, which carried a lot of risks, especially security-related ones. The too-short, situation-driven implementation cycle sometimes forced companies to skip legal and risk analysis or fault-tolerance testing. That is why conducting security audits of these solutions, as well as constantly improving competence and changing mentality in the area of digital transformation, is so crucial. It is also important to raise the awareness of the impact of the development of technology on the optimization and security of business processes.

Internal and external digitization

As a result of the necessity to conduct business in difficult conditions, further and more in-depth digitalization of internal processes allowed to combine business goals with care for the safety of employees. According to 56% of the entrepreneurs surveyed for the “Trusted economy in the new reality” report by Deloitte Legal, Obserwatorium.biz and Asseco, most of the changes introduced by Polish companies were designed to enable remote work. The second most common area (51 percent) for digitization projects included internal company processes related to document circulation and online contract signing. Covid contributed to the acceleration of activities already under way, as well as to the immediate launch of new initiatives that were crucial for the day-to-day functioning of companies.

A one of a kind tool facilitating remote business is the qualified electronic signature, which is equivalent to the traditional one. Currently in Poland there are over 600 thousand active qualified certificates, which is still in sharp contrast to the number of issued payment cards (43 million), which have long been a mass product. It should be noted, however, that there has been a year-to-year increase of over 100,000 certificates (over 20%). The “paperless” revolution may not equal the “cashless” revolution, but one cannot deny that there has been a significant acceleration.

The increase in popularity of remote customer registration in the commercial sector and of the trusted profile (in December it exceeded the threshold of 8.6 million profiles) in public administration in Poland indicates a huge demand for electronic identification services, which can be supplemented by other digital commercial solutions. The electronic identification alone is becoming a key service that should have a clear legislative framework in public administration and the commercial world. Its implementation must be both convenient and secure for end customers, covering as many online processes as possible.

The increased commonness of electronic signatures brings also implications in the form of the need for knowledge among individuals or business entities that are not specialized in this area. This, in turn, generates a requirement to obtain at least basic competence in this area for a very wide group of users. This is where the qualified validation service comes to the rescue, providing verification of qualified signatures regardless of the solution provider – although it is also not yet widespread.

Law – a barrier to development?

One of the most important issues of the economy based on trust services is electronic identification. A key element is standardization and unification of both technological and legislative frameworks. Secure and transparent electronic identification that enables unambiguous verification of the identity of e-service users is of paramount importance for the security of digital processes. It will also bring great benefits in the implementation of the GDPR and the protection of the rights of consumers and citizens.

More widespread and uniform regulation is also needed for solutions based on remote identification and video-identification in the European market. Such regulations are very much needed, especially in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the entire world. Already today we are witnessing intensive development of technology and increasing popularization of solutions based on remote channels in virtually every sector. Experts consider it as a natural stimulator of the development of trust services, and it is extremely important to obtain support for these services from supervisory authorities and public administration on equal terms across the European Union.

We are awaiting the results of the revision of the eIDAS regulation, which is an excellent opportunity for the implementation of adjustments and changes necessary four years into its operation, for example regarding the already mentioned issue of a uniform approach of Member States’ supervision authorities to the functioning of remote identity verification techniques.

Ewelina Chudy, Head of the Product Management Team in the Security and Trust Services Division at Asseco Data Systems.