firma4ng is a professional application for digital signature that allows signing and verifying any type of electronic document.
This application has been already used since 2009 in reference to the Deliberation CNIPA n.45/2009 (today managed by Agid, Agenzia per l’Italia Digitale) and to the European directive 1999/93 which wasn’t mandatory but was the guideline that software producers decided to follow to be internationally conformed.
Then in 2014 it was announced the new regulation eIDAS, with this law the European Union univocally defined the standards for the implementation of electronic signatures. Unlike the previous directives, this one lays down a legal obligation that Certification Authorities, software producers etc. have to follow to have a common line of interaction.
eIDAS regulation introduced many innovations, for example it added to the concept of electronic signature that of electronic seal, which is the electronic signature put not by an individual but by a legal entity. The regulation has a series of laws called decisions, issued by European Union to establish the right parameters. In general, these decisions replicate the standards established by ETSI (the European Telecommunications Standards Institute).
Approved in 2014, eIDAS regulation has officially become law on the 1st July 2016. The update of firma4ng started even before that day and went on until the application was completely revised and adapted to the new law.
The first step during the update of firma4ng was implementing the interrogation procedure of all the TSL (Trust Service List) of the member Stated of the Union: it is the services which provide the list of all the accredited TSP (Trusted Service Provider); the second step was the control of the user certificate to be sure that it had the structure, the data, the areas expected by the regulation, always following the ETSI standards officialised by eIDAS. Finally, firma4ng adopted the formats of digital signature established by the regulation and effective in all the European Union.
The deadline to conform to eIDAS directives was the 1st July 2017. Bit4id finished well in advance the update and today firma4ng is totally compliant with the European regulation eIDAS.
