Guaranteeing the safety of e-signing with SAP and hardware security modules

⇨ SAP solutions heavily rely on electronic documents for efficient operations across various industries, necessitating robust security measures to protect these transactions.

⇨ Thales Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) enhance the performance and security of e-document transactions within SAP environments, adhering to high encryption standards and regulatory requirements.

⇨ Implementing a streamlined digital signing solution can significantly reduce approval timelines and costs compared to traditional document-signing methods, while ensuring authenticity and regulatory compliance.

Having a hand in many industries, a lot of SAP solutions utilize electronic documents as a means to streamline operations and communication between different departments. While swapping e-documents may seem dated compared to many other tech advances, it’s still an integral part of everyday operations for many businesses – and must be kept secure.

Hearing from enterprise security specialist, Thales, the firm says it’s possible to create a safer environment for the transaction of different e-documents within the SAP environment through the use of hardware security modules (HSMs), and effective security best practices.

E-documents are exchanged every day within some of the faster-paced industries – procurement, manufacturing, customer service, sales, finance and human resources are all beholden and rely on electronic documents to operate effectively and efficiently. So, combining SAP Secure Digital Signing with HSMs can help contribute to a safe and secure e-signing environment.

Thales Hardware Security Modules, for instance, are said to help in two crucial areas: performance and security. The National Institute of Standards and Technology recommends that keys used when signing e-documents are at minimum 2048 bits to ensure security. Due to the large length of the keys needed, specified hardware that supports key generation and document signing becomes a necessity. By offloading all encryption functionality to a specialized HSM with its own crypto processors, organizations can avoid overloading their host servers during high-stress business periods.

The e-signing solution adheres to standards-based X.509 certificates, in accordance with regulations and legal mandates that help maintain the authenticity of electronic documents. The SAP Secure Digital Signing solution can also adhere to country-specific regulations, helping increase overall interoperability.

Through the use of a streamlined document signing solution, organizations can reduce approval process timelines for multiple authorizing signatures, while also saving costs associated with traditional document-signing processes, like the paper itself, ink, postage and manual processing time. For Thales, combining SAP solutions with its own has been shown to provide users with the ability to securely and digitally sign documents, files, forms or transactions, while also ensuring the authenticity of the signer and guaranteeing regulatory compliance. By securing e-signing measures with robust defence like an HSM from Thales, organizations can gain peace of mind and increased approval efficiency.