Signority has its headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was incorporated as a federal and a provincial corporation on November 19, 2010 by two Canadian entrepreneurs: Jane He and Qingbo Jin. At inception, the company name was EPEink and the product name was GreenSignatures. In January 2013, the company and the product were re-branded to Signority.
A patent application is a break through in the incorporation complicated digital signature technology, or PKI Public Key Infrastructure into a SaaS offering. PKI is highly secure, and is recognized by global legislative bodies. Conversely, the legal weight of electronic signatures is a matter for debate in many regions outside of North America, and within specific sectors within North America, such as banks and medical institutions. PKI has been around for years, but is very complicated and expensive to operate. It usually requires on-premises software that must be installed at both servers and the clients that utilize PKI. PKI ensures document signing nonrepudiation and document integrity within an organization, but it is not practical when recipients are outside the organization, such as when recipients are external to the organization hosting the PKI servers. Signority invented a method to bring PKI into its SaaS offering, by never generating and storing private keys on its servers. The private key is generated on the fly at the user end each time. The method was invented by University of Ottawa Professors Carlisle Adams, who previously designed CAST algorithm, and Guy-Vincent Jourdan.
A patent application for two signing methods: Real-Time Sign, which incorporates electronic evidence during the signing process to meet global legislation, and Open Sign: a time saver for document administrators that enables large volume public recipients signing template-based forms. The inventors are founders Jane He and Qingbo Jin.
Signority is completely web-based and supports multiple mainstream browsers including Firefox, Chrome and IE8+. There is no need for software installation and specialized hardware. It also offers 3rd party integration through API for enterprise customers.
Legality
Signority uses multiple level user ID authentication for login and secured communication with 256 bit SSL encryption protocol. Since various North American and international laws and regulations, including ESIGN, the Uniform Electronic Commerce Act, and PIPEDA, permit the use of electronic signatures in many situations and sectors, such as legal sector and real estate sector, Signority electronic signature is valid and legally binding.
