The Challenge

Handling a lot of paper documents

Handling a lot of paper documents is becoming

increasingly challenging in a company.

There are two typical scenarios.

A lot of documents are received, created and
printed in an office. These papers are typically
stored in a document folder in a filing cabinet
while work continues. When the task has been
completed or after a certain period of time, the
documents are then stored in a paper archive in
the basement for the required retention period.
The archive needs a large room, handling and
administration is expensive and finding a document
when requested can prove to be very difficult. Paper
archives are usually not protected against disasters
and paper also grows old, becoming illegible, which
is a problem with regard to long retention periods.

Hundreds if not thousands of letters are received

daily in a companys mailroom. The letters sometimes have to be opened if no name is specified,
assigned and forwarded to a recipient and distributed within the company. The documents must also
be given a date of receipt stamp either in the
mailroom or in the department. The departments
sometimes copy letters or forward them directly to
other departments. When they have been processed,
the documents are then stored in a (paper) archive.

The disadvantage of such a procedure is the high

amount of personnel effort involved, the duplication
of work and documents and a very slow throughput
speed or high processing time. Documents are not
simultaneously available to all those involved until
they have been copied in a time-consuming manner.
A typical example would be a submitted building
application which must be verified and approved by
various authorities. Long processing times are the
result.
To obtain an end-to-end process chain that can
process documents it is necessary to convert a paper
document into an electronic document as early as
possible. It is usual for such a conversion to already
take place when the mail or the document is received. The received documents are converted into
a processing-proof format, which permits both the
integration of signatures and subsequent preservation in a long-term archive without any repeat format conversion. The PDF/A format is ideal for this
purpose. The scanned documents are subjected
to a random visual inspection prior to any further
processing. If the electronic copies match the originals in the random checks, the electronic documents
are electronically signed in a qualified manner.
Usage of electronic documents in business processes is a common standard to raise process
quality and lower response times. Archiving documents in digital formats offers many benefits in
comparison to paper-bound archives. Storage is

Paper Archive

Digital Archive

Fujitsu Compliant Archiving SecDocs

very cost-efficient, and digital documents can be

transferred both faster and cheaper. Digital documents do not suffer from physical aging which
can render documents unreadable due to paper
or ink decomposition.

What must be taken into consideration for electronic documents?

Recommendations for systems preserving legal

certainty (Best Practice)

Many business documents have to be stored for a

retention period. An electronic image of a paper
document is just a copy. Thus, a copy of a document
has to be authenticated by a notary or an official
person to make it acceptable as evidence by a court
or tax authorities. In the case of scanned paper
documents, the authentication needs to be done
by means of a qualified electronic signature on
each electronic document that is generated.

It is necessary to convert paper documents into

electronic documents very early in order to get a
continuously secured process chain for the processing of electronic documents. To allow the integration of electronic signatures and prevent format
conversion for the archive, the document format
should be chosen with care. The file formats PDF/A
and TIFF have gained international acceptance for
compliance with the required archive periods of up
to 99 years and more in certain regulations. After
conversion the scanned documents must undergo
visual examination before processing. If the scanned
documents match the paper originals, each document is electronically signed.

According to the European signature directive, the

qualified electronic signature is equal to a handwritten signature. This signature needs a secure signature calculation unit this means a smart card,
trustworthy card-reading terminal and signature
software, which control the access to the private key
in a secure way, and a qualified user certificate,
which is issued by a trustworthy certification authority (CA). To get such a certificate, the requesting user
has to be identified in a secure way by the certification authority.
This kind of transformation to legally valid electronic
documents enables you to do without paper documents in the business process. And results in fewer
costs for a paper archive, thus raising process quality
and lowering the processing time within the business process.

Technically speaking, a number of paper documents

are pooled to form a batch. Close to the time and
place of scanning this batch, the paper documents
are subjected to a visual examination and the
electronic images are generated by the scanners.
If the images correspond to the originals, every
document is electronically signed. The resulting
electronic documents are now authenticated and
are valid by law.

How Fujitsu can help

Fujitsu Secure Mailroom is an end-to-end input management solution used in the trusted and evidence-
preserving digitization of documents and incoming mails. The workflow is shown in the picture.
Digital Mailroom
Capture Solutions

Digital Mailroom
Workflow, OCR

Trusted Viewer, Audit Trail,

eSignatures (optional)

Electronic document
Swiss Post Solutions and PFU
Digital Mailroom
Scanners

Swiss Post Solutions

Full Range Offering

by Fujitsu
including modular Components

Scanner

N.N.
Special application
DMS
Workflow
Scan

Trustworthy Long Term

Preservation

SecDocs

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6
7
8
9

Bulk signatures
Single signature
Validation of evidence
Storage (documents and digital evidence)

Open interfaces (connectors) enable the solution

to be linked to any document management
systems or workflow systems. This application
provides a functionality to preserve the legal
certainty of electronic documents after scanning
the original paper-based documents. The digitization of documents and subsequent use of
meta data is carried out using best-of-breed
products specially created for this scenario.
Preservation is done by means of qualified electronic signatures on a batch, i.e. a mass signature
on a batch of documents after entering the signature PIN only once. The optional, subsequent
electronic signature is based on ISO/IEC 15408
and SigG-certified components.
Alternatively, signatures can be replaced by
TR-03138-compliant audit trails (transfer stamps
according to the specifications of the BSI-trusted
and replacing scan).

7
8

PFU
1
2
3
4
5

Fujitsu

9
1

Trustcenter
Certificates & Timestamps
Fujitsu

The certified TR-03125-compliant long-term

storage Fujitsu SecDocs can be integrated into
the solution in order to retain the evidentiary
value of the digitized documents for decades.
This solution can be expanded step-by-step and
in a flexible manner in order to establish a high
degree of automation and integration in the
customers process landscape.
The security kernel of the Fujitsu Secure Mailroom
components is supplied by OpenLimit AG, a leading international provider in the field of electronic
signatures. This component is certified according
to Common Criteria EAL4+ and German signature
law by Germanys Federal Office of Information
Security (BSI).
This enables incoming mail and documents to be
distributed quickly, copies are no longer required
in the departments, all documents are available
and also do not have to be forwarded.
5

The steps in detail:

Input management
Input management has already been in use in
public administration and industry for several years.
However, the electronic documents are usually
devalued before a court as a copy and are thus not
evidential. Fujitsus Secure Mailroom solution
provides the option of authenticating the electronic
copies according to valid regulations, such as the
Administrative Procedures Act (VwVfG) or TR-03138,
and thus of producing evidentiary value before a
court. The paper originals can be destroyed after
the scanning process.
Digitalization
Fujitsu provides an extremely rugged and high
quality product line from its own production with
the fi-series scanner for personal use from 3,000
pages per day right up to departmental scanners
with a throughput of up to 100,000 pages per day.
As an option, digitalization can be further enhanced
here through Kofax VRS or hardware based VRS
(available in the production class scanners).

Entry and data recording

The digitalized pages are automatically recognized,
indexed and summarized as documents. In the
standard configuration this is done by means of
barcodes on separate documents. OCR-based
processes for field recognition are optionally available. The proIntra system of our partner Swiss
Post Solutions provides effective quality assurance
of the scanned images and index data before the
latter are transferred to the following components
in the standard formats XML and PDF/A-1b.
Integrity assurance
The BatchSign application is used in order to
authenticate compliance of the images with the
paper original, which provides each document
with a qualified electronic signature or a transfer
stamp as per TR-03138. This application uses the
SigG-confirmed and Common Criteria EAL4+-certified
signature components from OpenLimit SignCubes.
The user loads a batch of documents into the application and makes a random test to determine
compliance of the scanned image with the original.
Then the batch is signed in a single run and optionally saved in the long-term archive Fujitsu SecDocs.
Due to the document type the documents can now
be passed to various target mailboxes for further
processing.

Evidence preservation
The evidence value of documents is preserved over
decades by the TR-03125-compliant long-term
archiving system Fujitsu SecDocs. This system
seals the documents with qualified timestamps,
which are renewed on a regular basis. Document
integrity is ensured by means of RFC 4998-compliant
Evidence Records, irrespective of the type of storage
technology used. This archive uses the SigG-confirmed and Common Criteria EAL4+-certified signature components from OpenLimit SignCubes.
Price concept
In principle, the price of the solution is based on
the annual paper volume in pages. To start using
trusted scanning very quickly Fujitsu offers a guide
based on ready-made solutions T-shirt configurations from 100,000 pages up to 10,000,000-page
scan volumes per year. The configuration includes
the right scanners, software licenses and volume
licenses with a basic function for the respective size.
Expandability
Every Fujitsu Secure Mailroom component can also
be purchased individually and adapted to customer-
specific requirements. The ready-made solutions
can also be expanded in every direction and at any
time according to customer requirements.

www.fujitsu.com/fts/solutions/high-tech/
solutions/datacenter/secdocs/index.html
www.fujitsu.com/emea/products/scanners/

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