CODEL: The Key To Digital Certainty

Barrister Jane Hill feels such a solution will be of increasing relevance to banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions that are faced by growing problems regarding data integrity.

Codel provides a service that creates a unique fingerprint or ‘Codelmark’ of digital files and then stores these indefinitely for future authentication. The system – developed with Sun Microsystems - works for files as diverse as word documents, music and images, where it also acts as a trusted third party to prove authenticity.

Codel has been successfully trialled by Postwatch, the government watchdog for the Post Office, and is being evaluated by two major banks.  Both Sun and Codel are optimistic that it will become an industry standard for establishing data authenticity.

Explains Jane Hill:  ‘One of the chief problems I have faced as a barrister working over the Internet is that of document integrity – establishing whether or not an electronically held document has remained in its original format.

'In many ways this issue also lies at the heart of EU directives that have been introduced to regulate electronic business over the Internet.  In the case of financial institutions, Codel provides a simple and effective method of verifying the continued integrity over time of data exchanges, thus providing a high degree of trust for those participating in electronic transactions.

'Given the comparatively low costs of implementation, and the fact that Codel integrates easily with existing systems, it means that organisations won’t have to spend huge sums on security solutions in order to achieve this.  Also, the fact that audit trail Codelmarks are published in the Financial Times means that proof of a transaction is readily available to all interested parties.’

James Zorab, CEO of Codel, is confident that it will bring further benefits to financial services organisations, in addition to compliance:

'Codel enables businesses not only to speed up business processes and save money but also to switch from paper thereby helping them to fulfil social and corporate responsibilities.  It is also effective in helping business organisations protect their digital, brand, and intellectual property assets, creating a much more secure environment.

‘Also, crucially, through our partnership with Sun Microsystems we have developed a product that is an open system, simple to use and which can be used between any software applications.  It is very user-friendly.’

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For further information please contact Matthew Barnett at Media Roof on 07703 026966, or e-mail: matthew@mediaroof.com