Digital Notary® Service Used by ClosingGuard.com in New York’s First Online Mortgage Closing
RESTON, VA, -- Surety, Inc, the leading provider of digital notarization services, announced today that ClosingGuard.com notarized its first online closing of a residential property in the state of New York using Surety\'s Digital Notary® Service. ClosingGuard is the first Internet-based mortgage closing system to recognize the importance of digital notarization as a critical element to securing online documents and electronic transactions.
\"This marks the first time Digital Notary Service has been used during an online mortgage closing. We believe that this is the beginning of a significant trend in the mortgage industry, protecting all parties in the online transaction process,\" said Barry Libenson, executive vice president of Surety, Inc. \"ClosingGuard has selected Surety\'s service to secure all of its online transactions, recognizing digital signature technology alone doesn\'t provide long-lasting protection.\"
Using Digital Notary Service in conjunction with other security technology such as digital signatures, ClosingGuard offers lenders, title insurers, real estate professionals, as well as buyers and sellers a secure and neutral platform to conduct automated residential closings. Participants use ClosingGuard\'s ClosingSpace platform, which securely manages all closing data. All forms are updated online, greatly reducing costs and errors.
At the closing, participants are able to make a final review of the documents and give approval online. Buyers sign electronically and all documents and forms are digitally notarized using Digital Notary Service. ClosingGuard(SM) captures and archives digitally authenticated images of all closing documents.
Beyond Digital Signatures
The American Bar Association Digital Signature Guidelines specifically recommend that any document signed using digital signature technology also be digitally notarized. ClosingGuard will use Surety\'s Digital Notary Service to fix the exact content of a document-and the digital signature used to sign it-at a specific moment in time. This allows anyone to prove far into the future that a digital transaction was legally binding regardless of the status of the digital certificate used to sign it. This is necessary because digital signatures rely on certificates that expire or can be compromised, and cannot establish the time an online transaction occurred.
\"Our goal is to provide ClosingGuard customers the most secure method of ensuring the integrity of the online mortgage closing,\" said Richard Lewis, chief information officer of ClosingGuard.com. \"Surety, Inc\'s Digital Notary Service allows us to verify without a doubt the validity of digital documents exchanged on our site today and tomorrow.\"
About Digital Notary Service
Digital Notary Service notarizes any digital content by creating a small digital fingerprint of the target data and sending it to Surety, Inc to be registered and timestamped. A unique Digital Notary Record is then sent back to the requesting client for later use in validating the notarization. Individuals, companies and governments using Surety, Inc\'s Digital Notary Service can be assured their proprietary data is protected because a digital fingerprint is a one-way identifier-no part of the original data record or file can be reconstructed from its fingerprint.
Offering unprecedented and irrefutable record security, Digital Notary Service protects electronic records in legal settings; reliably dates inventions to establish intellectual property rights; guarantees tamperproof records for regulatory compliance; prevents insider fraud, and; validates the authenticity of electronic records created by e-commerce transactions.
About ClosingGuard.com
ClosingGuard(SM) founded in November 1999, is an innovative Internet application service provider (ASP) offering lenders, real estate professionals, buyers and sellers a secure and neutral platform to conduct automated closings. ClosingGuard(SM) saves a significant amount of time, reduces operational and administrative expense, and provides the professional community with an Internet-based platform to conduct residential real estate closings. ClosingGuard(SM) is a scaleable, leading-edge e-Business solution that creates substantial economic benefits for all parties to the transaction. Using ClosingGuard(SM) is meant to reduce the frustration of the current process, increase productivity and gain a competitive advantage.
Posted: Wednesday, October 18, 2000