The organizations and individuals using the digital signature services provided by foreign firms such as VeriSign or Global Sign have been told that they are breaking the Vietnamese laws.

Dao Dinh Kha, Director of the National Center Of Digital Signature Authentication, has affirmed that this is the behavior of violating the laws to use the foreign digital signature services.

Kha said the foreign services have been accepted by some securities companies in the securities transactions. However, if inspectors discover the transactions, the securities companies and the violators would be punished.

To date, only a few foreign CA (certification authorities) have been allowed to provide digital signature authentication services. Intel, for example, has been allowed to use foreign CA in a number of limited transactions with the Vietnamese customs agencies.

Kha admitted that a lot of individuals still continue using foreign services, partially because the services could not be put under the management in the past. However, he said Vietnam is taking actions to tighten the control over the use of the services.

The Ministry of Information and Communication has finished the drafting of the decree on foreign digital certification. If the decree is promulgated, some CA would be allowed to provide services in Vietnam.

Also according to Kha, to date, some 300,000 digital certificates have been provided by the public CAs to enterprises for the use in the online customs declarations.

It is expected that the demand for the services would be increasing sharply from individuals, who need digital certification services in securities transactions, e-banking and online public services. Therefore, the public CAs now also target individual clients.

The technology groups, which have realized the increasingly high demand for digital certification services, have been trying to look for the new solutions to better serve clients.

They are, for example, considering integrating digital certifications into mobile phones for more convenient transactions. If so, clients would only have to bring mobile phones with themselves only instead of keeping a token device as well…

In order to develop the digital certification services, Vietnamese technology firms would have to provide the solutions technologically good enough to ensure the transactions’ transactions.

Two customers of Maritime Bank have claimed the loss of tens of millions of dong after the trouble with their phone numbers. This has been blamed on the backward security technology utilized by the bank.

After the trouble, Maritime Bank has tried to contact a digital signature service provider to discuss about the possible solutions to heighten the security efficiency for e-banking transactions.

Under the current regulations, CAs must pay a deposit of VND5 billion, the sum of money which would be used to compensate clients in case they go dissolved or forced to stop providing services.

While the existing CAs complain that the limited market demand in the first phase of the development has put big difficulties for their operations, more businesses still plan to jump on the bandwagon, thus creating a stiff competition among the service providers.

The representative of FPT-CA once complained at a conference held in 2012 that if CAs continue lowering the service fees to scramble for clients, they would “die soon.” Though the quoted service fees were nearly the same, the actual service feed could be lower since CAs offer big commissions and preferences.