Odyssey eSign is an electronic signature service for instant signing of documents securely in a legally acceptable form.

In the quest to create a true and completely digital India, the Indian Government has taken the initiative of bringing Digital Signatures to the masses through the eSign service. Though the Government has recognized Digital Signatures for more than a decade now, the high price and the learning curve for the users has deterred it from finding its place within most online processes. eSign enables every citizen with an Aadhaar Id to digitally sign, equivalent and even better in certain aspects to physical signatures, any digital document online.

As the Government prepares to create the necessary infrastructure to make available most of its services online to the citizens, Digitally Signing application forms and transactions becomes a critical part of it. With the steady onboarding of its billion citizens onto the Aadhaar platform, it is imperative to have an able infrastructure to support the initiative.

Odyssey’s eSign server is the true embodiment of India’s eSign service initiative. The server is built on the guidelines laid out by the Controller of Certifying Authority of India and is constantly updated with the ever evolving guidelines. Bearing in mind the ambitious plans of the Indian Government to serve its billion citizens, Odyssey’s eSign server is built on a robust platform to scale and perform with the growing volume of users.

Our team of experts, both consultants and technicians, take care of establishing you as an eSign Service Provider (ESP) in a quick and easy manner.

Standards Compliance

  • eSign Specifications (1.0, 1.5, 1.6, 2.0)
  • UIDAI specifications (OTP, e-KYC)
  • e-authentication Guidelines (Ver 1.2 June 2016)
  • Signing – PKCS#1 (RSA Signature) and ECC Signatures NIST P‐256
  • Hashing Algorithms –SHA256

Business Benefits

  • Quick deployment and go live cycles
  • Quick and easy onboarding of Application Service Providers (ASP)
  • Dedicated dashboard to manage the ASP’s accounts
  • Built-in load balancing between multiple CA servers eliminating the need for any external load balancers
  • Compatible with both Commercial and Open Source Operating Systems to effectively economize the deployment and maintenance costs
  • Scales both vertically and horizontally based on the business needs

Key Features

  • Supports multiple Application Service Providers (ASP)
  • Supports both Biometric and OTP authentication modes with UIDAI server.
  • Option available for integrated KUA service
  • Capable of generating and applying either RSA or Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) keys
  • Industry standard reports that serve auditing needs
  • Compatible with most Hardware security Modules (HSM) in the market
  • Intuitive user interface enables easy management of solution
  • Configurable to interface with CA clusters and Disaster Recovery sites for maximizing throughput and uptime
  • Modularized design adhering to Domain separation requirements
  • Compliance with guidelines of Controller of Certifying Authority (CCA)
  • Interoperable with standards compliant Certifying Authority products
  • Compliance with Aadhaar Data Vault requirements of UIDAI

Similar to Certification Authority infrastructure, eSign service too has reliance on a number of entities. There are primarily five entities involved in eSign service.

Signer

  • End-User and holder of Aadhaar who requires data/document to be signed using eSign service.

Application Service Provider (ASP)

  • An entity who acts as a bridge between end-user and ESP to facilitate the signing process.
  • Receives data from end-user and connects with ESP to obtain signature by providing the collected Aadhaar credentials in some models.

UIDAI/KSA (Aadhaar Server)

  • Entity established by Government of India to provide e-KYC authentication service for a registered KSA/KUA. KSA is a eKYC Service Agency and KUA is a eKYC User Agency.

eSign Service Provider (ESP)

  • A trusted 3rdparty who carries out the signing activity of the document.
  • Aids in
    • Fetching subscriber details using Aadhaar Number where the ASP has not done so.
    • Subscriber’s Key Pair Generation in HSM.
    • Obtaining Certificate from CA.
    • Creation of digital signature.

Certifying Authority(CA)

  • Organization licensed by CCA India for issuance of digital certificate for eSign service.