Signicat

Signicat is a privately held digital identity service provider founded in 2007 in Trondheim, Norway. It offers cloud-based services for digital identity management, strong and adaptive authentication, identity assurance (identity proofing), electronic signing and sealing, and long-term preservation of signed documents. The company has around 70 employees across eight countries and more than 250 customers globally, with a primary focus on the Nordics and broader European markets. Its value proposition addresses a fundamental IT shift toward cloud services and consumer/citizen-centric experiences, where organizations need to connect, authenticate, and assure users while meeting growing KYC demands and consolidating a “holistic picture” of customers across systems and login methods.

Signicat’s portfolio is organized into four modular services—Assure, Connect, Sign, and Preserve—powered by a shared infrastructure and also positioned together as the DISP (Digital Identity Service Provider) platform. These services tackle a fragmented market where organizations often stitch together separate tools for CIAM, authentication, signing, and archiving, complicated by country-specific requirements for legally valid signatures, regulated archiving, and strong authentication tied to national authenticators (eIDs, bank IDs, cards). Assure supports flexible identity proofing using national eIDs, passports/ID documents, bank account information, or social media data, including sequential combinations to fit differing legal regimes. Connect provides an authentication hub supporting many authenticators and devices, serving primarily as an authentication layer rather than a full identity directory. Sign enables eID-based signing (supporting more than 20 methods), multi-document and multi-signer flows, and document sealing with integrity and proof-of-origin. Preserve focuses on long-term archiving, trusted timestamps, and periodic re-sealing (e.g., every five years) to maintain validity as algorithms weaken or keys are compromised. A notable addition since May 2016 is MobileID for Strong Customer Authentication on smart devices to help meet PSD2-driven multi-factor requirements.

• Signicat was founded in 2007 in Trondheim, Norway and is privately held.
• The company has around 70 employees in eight countries and more than 250 customers globally.
• Signicat’s primary market focus is the Nordic region and other European markets.
• The core service set consists of Assure, Connect, Sign, and Preserve.
• The four services are not interdependent and can be adopted individually.
• Signicat’s main data centers are located in Norway.
• An alternative deployment based on public cloud IaaS services is available.
• Signicat Sign supports more than 20 eID methods for creating signatures.
• PSD2 is described as obliging transactions over $30 to use at least two-factor authentication.
• Strong Customer Authentication is described as requiring Knowledge, Possession, and Inherence, coming into effect in the last quarter of 2018.

• “Consumers and, in eGovernment, citizens are at the center of attention nowadays, requiring solutions that allow managing, connecting, authenticating, and assuring users.”
• “KYC (‘Know Your Customer’) is of ever-increasing importance, as customers have moved to embrace digital channels.”
• “Organizations are focused on creating a holistic picture of their customers, regardless of the login they use, and across all systems where customer-related information is stored.”
• “These documents require digital signatures that are not only legally valid today, but also in years to come.”
• “Organizations will have to combine a number of disparate solutions for a comprehensive approach to managing the journey of a customer from authentication and assurance to signed contracts.”
• “Signicat has been a pioneer in establishing cloud-based Identity-as-a-Service as a real alternative to on-premise installations.”
• “Assurance is about identity-proofing, which means assuring that someone really is who he claims to be.”
• “Signicat Connect serves as the authentication layer for backend services, not as the full-purpose directory service.”
• “Re-sealing is important when the algorithms that have been used are considered to be no longer secure, or when keys are compromised.”
• “Signicat solutions are easy to implement and integrate into existing services.”