Postident Online with the new Personal Identity Card

Abstract

Deutsche Post enjoys a high reputation with its customers for reliability and seriousness, and thus is ideally suited to provide products and services connected with the topic of security. Within their business processes, many companies require certainty about the identity of their contractual partners; especially on the Internet, where the subject of data security has the highest priority, this requirement entails reliable innovations. The established physical product “Postident” is already providing secure, personal identifications of end customers today, in a manner which complies with the law, but the future demands modern electronic solutions.

The challenges for companies as well as for end customers and an increasingly tightening legal framework have led Deutsche Post to think about an online strategy for its Postident product in a digital future. In addition to speed, convenience, savings in cost and effort and the need to comply with the law, the security aspect is to be the focus of the new developments. Because this is the area where Deutsche Post is especially competent!

Using the online identity card function of the new personal identity card, the existing Postident procedure is to be expanded to incorporate the possibility of secure, quicker and more convenient identification on the Internet. The objective is for the private customer to be able to use a computer with Internet access, the new personal identity card and the corresponding card PIN to prove his identity conclusively and as laid down by law. The innovative, forward-looking service offering of Deutsche Post is completed by the provision of an eID server by Deutsche Post’s Signtrust business unit, the issuing of authorisation certificates and by data supply to companies “from a single source”, in a single format and via one interface.