Surety’s Digital Notary® Service Plays Key Role in Ingersoll-Rand’s E-Business Initiatives
RESTON, VA, and WOODCLIFF LAKE, NJ -- Surety, Inc, the leading provider of digital notarization services, and Ingersoll-Rand Company (NYSE: IR), a leading diversified industrial corporation, today announced that Surety\'s Digital Notary® Service has been selected for use in IR\'s eCommerce expansion. Digital Notary Service will be used to protect all transactions between IR and corporate suppliers as well as with customers via newly developed E-Business Marketplace systems spanning the company\'s four global growth sectors.
By June of 2001, the company expects to have implemented systems resulting in millions of Digital Notary Service transactions each year. IR expects to begin notarizing on-line data within three months. The company projects that, by the end of one year, Digital Notary Service will ensure the authenticity of all transactions across IR\'s global growth markets of Climate Control, Industrial Productivity, Infrastructure Development and Security and Safety.
B2B Security Needs
A recent Gartner Group report forecasted that B2B exchange revenues will grow to over $2.7 trillion by 2004. As corporations increase business conducted over the Internet, risks increase and security becomes paramount. In May, IR launched an electronic commerce business unit tasked to integrate e-business initiatives throughout the corporation\'s four global growth sectors.
\"We chose Digital Notary Service to protect the integrity of our digital data because it will minimize the legal exposure of conducting high-revenue financial transactions online\" said Robert Orshaw, vice president of E-business Technologies at IR. \"Digital Notary Service will play a critical role in ensuring the integrity of data transactions and the longevity of digital data at IR. The security of our online transactions and digital data are imperative to our success as we add e-business ventures and initiatives to our existing portfolio of businesses.\"
IR expects to use Surety\'s Digital Notary Service in conjunction with digital signatures. The combination of the two security measures provides greater security for an extended time period. Digital signatures alone are inadequate because digital certificates expire. By notarizing digitally signed documents, companies can prove the validity beyond the expiration of a digital signature. \"This agreement demonstrates the value of combining Digital Notary Service with public key infrastructure efforts,\" said Barry Libenson, executive vice president, sales and marketing, Surety, Inc. \"As companies continue to migrate business operations to the Internet, they are discovering digital signatures alone cannot provide the level of protection they need. We are excited our technology will play such a critical role as IR expands its business onto the Internet.\"
The annual agreement, renewable for three years, will allow IR\'s more than 50,000 employees across the company to use Digital Notary Service enterprise-wide. IR will be using Surety\'s Digital Notary Service Software Development Kit to tightly integrate the service in existing applications.
\"Surety, Inc\'s Digital Notary Service will be easy to integrate into IR\'s existing applications, \" said Robert Oshaw. \"We expect that the integration of Digital Notary Service into our information system processes will be so seamless that our employees, partners and customers will not even be aware that documents and data they are exchanging are being notarized.\"
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\'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 Ingersoll-Rand
Ingersoll-Rand is a major diversified industrial equipment and components manufacturer serving the global growth markets of Climate Control, Industrial Productivity, Infrastructure Development and Security and Safety. The company employs more than 50,000 people. Further information on Ingersoll-Rand can be found on the company\'s World Wide Web site at http://www.irco.com.
Posted: Wednesday, October 4, 2000