I'm Brendan Hyland. I help regulated facilities transform their software, spreadsheets, workflows and documents from time-consuming, deviation-invoking, regulatory burdens, to the competitive advantage they were meant to be. Join me every week as we take a few minutes to explore, design, test and improve the critical systems we use in our facilities.
How do you prove you're you when signing a document?
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Last time we left off with a cliff-hanger of a question: How do you prove you're you when signing a document? There are several ways I've seen that the 3rd party providers prove that it's you who's signed the document:
Obviously these are very different levels of assurance. Then there's the level of control you have over the signature - can anyone with access to an email just sign? Or do you have to log in to the service with a password? Or perhaps you need some kind of card or device to use the signature? As you might expect, there are standards that dictate the identity and security requirements behind different levels of electronic signatures - most prominently the Advanced Electronic Signatures (AdES) and Qualified electronic Signatures (QES) that have been adopted in the European Union. AdES guarantees that there's been identity verification, whereas QES add stringent requirements for, among other things, a qualified certificate and a device, such as a USB token, that you use to sign documents. Until next time, thanks for reading! – Brendan p.s. Enjoy this message? Read more at the Hyland Quality Systems website. |
The HaiQu Newsletter
I'm Brendan Hyland. I help regulated facilities transform their software, spreadsheets, workflows and documents from time-consuming, deviation-invoking, regulatory burdens, to the competitive advantage they were meant to be. Join me every week as we take a few minutes to explore, design, test and improve the critical systems we use in our facilities.
I’ve seen this pattern repeatedly: Instrument data is saved as an Excel or CSV. Data is then copied to a bare-bones spreadsheet with several columns of calculations or transformations. Results from the spreadsheet’s calculations are copied for use further down the data analysis pipeline. And I, the auditor, get handed a signed and dated pdf of the worksheet. Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe Here! Why yes, M. Inspector, this spreadsheet was validated! Ok, they are rarely this bad - I...
Calling quality people everywhere! I've just released something I think you'll find useful. Over the past 20 years working in regulated environments, I've seen the same spreadsheet problems show up again and again: A quick Excel tool gets built to solve an immediate need. It works. Gets "validated" with a few hand calculations. Then gets reused and modified for different datasets or slightly different purposes. Eventually - sometimes months or years later - someone discovers an error. Or an...
I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be presenting at the CCSQA/NERCSQA Joint Annual Meeting in October! The conference is 2 days, Thursday & Friday, 16-17 October 2025, in Laval, Quebec, Canada. On-site and virtual attendance available. Here's the announcement link: https://sqa.org/CCSQA/CCSQA/Events/Upcoming_Events.aspx My session is on Friday morning, and titled "The power of a specification: Freeing your creative self to go beyond compliance." Here's the abstract: As busy quality...