The heads of state are from Singapore, Indonesia, Cambodia, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Myanmar and Lao.
Baltimore Technologies, a provider of e-security products and services, has been appointed the official technology supplier for the digital signing.
Baltimore's e-security technology allows the heads of state to attach a unique personal code to the document. This code will then be used to verify the authenticity of the signature. A digital certificate stored on a smartcard automatically verifies the digital signatures.
ID.Safe, the Singapore-based Commercial Certificate Authority (CA) set up by Commercial and Industrial Security Corporation (CISCO) and the Singapore Post, will issue the digital certificate. In addition to ID Safe, there will be one other CA, DigiCert of Malaysia, who will be producing the certificate for the head of state for Malaysia.
One of the main goals of the e-ASEAN committee is to help fellow member countries e-commerce standards, and to harmonise the components of electronic transaction bills that currently exist in various forms across the ASEAN region.
"For e-commerce to really develop, digital signature technology needs to be widely adopted. This is of paramount importance and it is very encouraging to see the ASEAN countries not only creating digital signature laws but coming together to harmonise these laws and bring down trade barriers across the region," said Lim Yong Gang, general manager, ID.Safe.
