IDC VENDOR SPOTLIGHT - eMudhra

IDC VENDOR SPOTLIGHT

STRIKING THE RIGHT BALANCE: HARNESSING THE POWER OF DIGITAL IDENTITY, SECURITY, AND ANALYTICS TO FOSTER BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION

January 2019

Sponsored by: eMudhra Limited

Written by: Sandeep Kumar Sharma, Associate Research Manager

Introduction

State of Digital Transformation in India

Digital transformation is no longer a buzzword in India, with a major chunk of businesses adopting measures to enhance their digital postures. This is valid for organizations across several industry verticals and company sizes. As per an IDC study on DX spend in India, the investment in digital transformation initiatives in the country in 2018 was estimated to be around US$7.1 billion — this was a massive 25% of the overall enterprise IT spend. Unsurprisingly, DX spend is anticipated to grow five times vis-à-vis the enterprise IT investments for the 2016–2021 period.

What DX Initiatives Are Organizations Focusing on?

Customer onboarding and experience of services, emergent revenue streams (through newer connected products and solutions), and data monetization figure prominently as the top business and digital priorities for a multitude of organizations (see Figure 1). In addition, organizations are also placing thrust on operational efficiency through initiatives such as paperless transformation and the usage of digital ID.

Banks, for instance, have begun considering themselves more as technology companies that are enabling banking services. Traditional bank branches have given away to omni-channel customer interactions, the most prominent modes being internet and mobile banking; digital platforms with open application programming interfaces (APIs) that are connected to a diverse array of external applications are the order of the day.

KEY THEME DX initiatives are built on the platform of a robust digital infrastructure that must include solutions for digitization and automation of workflows and content, security, and analytics.

KEY TAKEAWAYS Organizations must invest in DX capabilities, such as data monetization, paperless office, customer experience, and scaled DX platforms.

To support such capabilities, organizations must carefully select and engage with solution providers that have impeccable business credentials, robust and relevant solutions, strong delivery capabilities, and an innate penchant for innovation.

AT A GLANCE

Businesses and governments all over the world have made conscious strides toward their digital transformation (DX) journeys. For such initiatives, organizations must take into consideration the presence of the appropriate digital infrastructure needed for the success of these initiatives. This IDC Vendor Spotlight attempts to provide a glimpse of the state of digital transformation in India, and why stakeholders in India should consider eMudhra as an enabler of their DX journeys.


Analytics are being leveraged by a host of banks to generate insights into their customers and to arrive at newer products. Paper-driven processes are being transitioned into paperless processes that leverage Aadhar-based electronic signatures or token-based digital signatures, legally valid under the IT Act of India (2000), for convenience and cost effectiveness. Since the spate of cybersecurity attacks in 2018, there has been additional emphasis on risk and cybersecurity management, with the centerstage being taken by identity and access management solutions. Conversion of manual processes, elimination of paper across workflows, and automation of existing business workflows are the other top priorities for a majority of private and public sector banks in the country and have been enabled by a platform comprising digital identity, security, and associated infrastructure solutions.

FIGURE 1: DX Spend by Initiatives

Source: IDC Decoding DX Survey, 2018

Government departments/agencies both at the central and in different states have been very active on the digital transformation front. Massive investments were made in the last decade in IT modernization and egovernance initiatives. Nevertheless, there were tremendous gaps in effective delivery of services — this prompted the development of a massive platform-based digital infrastructure by the government, viz. Aadhar. The ambitious nature of the program can be gauged from the fact that a unique identity has been envisaged for more than 1 billion citizens of India.


For the government to be able to leverage this identity, it would ultimately translate into billions of dollars' worth of leakages in several schemes subsiding, effectively reach the needy citizens, and create an overarching infrastructure to support several initiatives for other industry verticals, such as banking, telecommunications, healthcare, education, transportation, Smart Cities, and so on. Figure 2 highlights the dimensions/areas that would be impacted by a digital-ready infrastructure.

FIGURE 2: Impact Areas of a Digital-Ready Infrastructure

Source: India Stack, 2018

Need of the Hour for Indian Stakeholders (Organizations and Government)

Although the DX intent is clearly being expressed in actual spend on initiatives, Indian organizations still lag behind in maturity and effectiveness as far as these initiatives are concerned. Around 68.5% of organizations are still in the initial phases of Digital Transformation Maturity (IDC India DX MaturityScape, 2017) and are struggling to translate their business needs into effective IT investment and operational plans. At the strategic level, a majority of enterprises still do not have the apt road map, capabilities, and organizational structure to design and execute such initiatives. There are two other important avenues that organizations must reconsider from a technology perspective — dearth of technology infrastructure to support the digital enterprise and integration issues across DX initiatives in organizations.


To orchestrate and accelerate digital transformation, organizations must have the ready technology infrastructure to support such initiatives. However, the scenario in most of organizations is far from satisfactory. Figure 3 highlights the capabilities that must be built into the DX fabric of organizations.

FIGURE 3: Top Digital Capabilities Needed for Successful DX Programs

Source: IDC DX Executive Sentiment Survey, 2018

Broadly, organizations need to place a significant quantum of emphasis on three pillars that hold the key to transforming their organizations, viz. digitization and enablement of transactions through content management, paperless office, and digital identity solutions; analytics clubbed with cognitive capabilities to uncover insights into customers and avenues of internal process efficiencies; and finally, an overarching security layer to ward off threats from all the DX initiatives in organizations.

To accomplish the business objectives through the abovementioned technology investments, organizations must carefully evaluate and select solution providers with the requisite capabilities.


Technology partners selected for DX initiatives must emanate certain traits: market leadership and brand reputation, robust portfolio, strong support and local presence, business stability, innovation capabilities, and flexibility in commercial engagement. Figure 4 lists the top criteria that must be considered when selecting a partner for enabling such DX initiatives.

FIGURE 4: DX Partner Selection Criteria

Source: IDC, 2018

eMudhra as the DX Enablement Partner

Based in Bangalore, eMudhra is one of the leading technology vendors providing solutions that enable secure digital transformation with an outlook toward enabling an integrated digital society. As one of the first public Certifying Authorities and the first Aadhaar eSign provider, eMudhra has played a pivotal role in enabling digital transformation in India, envisioned under the Digital India initiative.

With around 10 years in business in digital identity and transaction management, it has a global development center (GDC) with more than 200,000 sq ft of space in Bangalore, and a global presence across the United States, Asia/Pacific, Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and India through more than 200 enterprise partners. In India, eMudhra boasts a significant market share in the digital signature market, having issued

• eMudhra is India's leading

Certifying Authority (CA) for the

issuance of digital signature

certificates.

• It works with several

government departments or

initiatives (MCA, tax filing,

electronic tendering), and more

than 400 larger enterprises in

India, including the top banks,

and over 75% of top financial

services companies.


over 45 million digital signatures to date with a distribution channel of 21,000 partners that span across the country.

eMudhra chairs the Asia PKI Consortium and the India PKI Forum and is an executive member of the Cloud Signature Consortium; in addition, members of senior management actively contribute to global bodies, such as the UN/CEFACT, on promoting DX initiatives through data and identity-driven technologies. eMudhra is CMMI certified and ISO 9001, 27001, and 2000-1 accredited.

Empowering DX Initiatives Across Several Industry Verticals

Since its inception, eMudhra has been engaged with government organizations, departments, and initiatives, along with the private sector enterprises, in supporting several DX initiatives, such as customer onboarding in BFSI, eOffice transformation in government, and ediplomas in education, and enabling enterprises to go paperless with its paperless office platform for their human resources (HR), legal, and finance workflows. The important initiatives are listed below.

Digitization and Paperless Transactions for All Sectors

This is usually among the first few steps in the digital transformation journey of organizations, including those of government departments. eMudhra has solutions that convert manual paper-based workflows and documents to paperless ones using legally valid digital signatures while ensuring easy integration into any existing client application, thereby accelerating digitization efforts of end customers and helping them significantly reduce costs. This finds application among organizations across a variety of verticals, such as government, BFSI, automotive, IT and ITeS, ecommerce, and others.

Most of the governance services (for instance, birth records, land records, procurement, and others) have been digitized and offered digitally. Similarly, on the enterprise side, workflows pertaining to HR, finance, and legal have been transformed to render them automated and paperless.

Providing Legally Valid Digital Signatures

Leveraging on identity, through Aadhar and other forms as a foundation to enable digital transformation, the ability to digitally sign empowers the shift to a digital and paperless world in a significant way, maintaining data integrity, identity pertaining to transaction, and confidentiality. As one of the largest CAs in India, eMudhra provides certificates with multiple levels of assurance, including one-time certificates leveraging Aadhar or CA instant KYC, that form the foundation to many significant digital initiatives in India, such as DigiLocker, Goods and Services Tax (GST), foreign trade, and more.


eMudhra's CA arm has been actively working with many regulatory bodies to effectively map technology with use cases to drive the digital transformation of various government and private sector processes.

FIGURE 5: eMudhra Empowering Digital Transformation Initiatives

Source: eMudhra, 2018

Securing Application Access Through Identity and Access Management Solutions

In today's interconnected ecosystem, it becomes imperative for organizations to account for adequate provisioning of the right level of application access for its stakeholders. Digital identity becomes a crucial component of such initiatives, and it has been put to use across several organizations, most notably in government projects and in BFSI companies. eMudhra's emAS is uniquely positioned to provide for a trusted ecosystem through its ability to support 15 factors of authentication (including user and device certificates), sophisticated identity provisioning and


access management capabilities, and elements of identity governance, to assure security around digital identity and access.

Analytics Running the Insights Engine

eMudhra has also worked with organizations to help them in assessing humungous volumes of data, particularly for BFSI companies, to enable fraud and risk detection for specific customer lending and corporate borrowing use cases.

The Analytics engine has also been actively leveraged by organizations for several other initiatives, such as Internet of Things (IoT) (also used by government departments and Smart Cities) and customer behavior insights through social media monitoring.

eMudhra Solutions Portfolio

In line with the customer needs and initiatives mentioned above, eMudhra offers a range of solutions: Paperless Office Solutions, Identity Governance Suite, Risk and Fraud Analytics, and Public Key Infrastructure Suite.

FIGURE 6: eMudhra Solutions



1. emSigner — Paperless Office Solution

This is primarily a web-based application that is offered on the cloud and on-premise and is designed for large-scale enablement of paperless workflows through usage of both qualified (CA-issued, Aadhaar eSign) and nonqualified (esignatures that are email-validated) digital signatures of larger organizations.

emSigner is easy to deploy and comes with a set of powerful features that allows organizations to manage their interactions with customers, vendors, and employees in a completely paperless manner. emSigner is also pre-integrated with leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, such as Salesforce, SAP, Microsoft, and Google, and it offers an easy way to eliminate documents that require paper-based signatures to digitally signed documents.

The solution can provision the following functionalities:

• Ability to categorize documents based on workflow (human resources, finance, and legal)

• Define data residency for global customers, allowing them to choose their location to store data

• Bulk signing capabilities

• Workflow management and collaborative editing

• Flexi-forms for creating fillable forms that allow dynamic field entry

• Ability to integrate with digital ID providers to facilitate seamless customer onboarding

• QR code document authenticity verification (offline/online)

• Define list of signatories and placeholders as part of templates

• Role-based access

• Mobile apps for signing

• Audit logs and inbuilt digital signature validation engine

• Reporting — aging, turnaround time

• Comprehensive set of API's user, document, and workflow management

• Document encryption/decryption

• Pre-integration with Tally, Salesforce, and other popular ERP/CRM systems

IDC Opinion

Distinguishing Features of emSigner

• Enterprise-grade solution; highly

scalable and comprehensive

• Flexibility for smaller organizations through a cloud-based solution

• Inbuilt identity, access, and security; possibility of QR code–based

document authenticity verification

• Pre-configured activities and forms

• Enablement of bulk document creation and signing

• Enabled on mobile devices

• Embedded analytics

• Uniquely suited for India given the IT Act around legal admissibility of signatures


Business Traction for emSigner

Several larger enterprises across financial services, IT, business process outsourcing, and ecommerce have leveraged emSigner for automating either end-to-end workflows for several processes or point automation needs. Figure 7 shows the list of clients and the key processes digitized.

FIGURE 7: emSigner Business Traction and Select Deployments


2. emAS (eMudhra Authentication Server — Identity and Access Management Suite)

This identity and access management suite and the authentication components therein are leveraged by banks, government agencies, and other financial institutions for authentication of retail and institutional customers.

emAS Suite powers multifactor authentication across more than 40 banks globally, including most of the top 25 banks in India. It is uniquely designed and positioned to allow seamless access management for the enterprise customers and allows support for multifactor authentication. The solution can provision the following functionalities:

• Comprehensive user management with auto provisioning • SAML-based application integration • Inbuilt multifactor authentication supporting 15 factors of authentication • Policy, severity, and risk profile management for defining access control • End-user self-service portal

• Self-backup and self-diagnosis • Single sign-on


• Adaptive authentication using machine learning • Robust reporting module and tamper-proof audit logs

Business Traction for emAS

A host of major banks, including the largest private and public sector banks in the country, leverage authentication through digital signatures for large value fund transfers and for corporate internet banking. Besides, emAS is also used by several banks for one-time password, Grid Cards, and knowledge base–based authentication.

FIGURE 8: emAS Suite — Deployments in Select Banks in India


IDC Opinion

Distinguishing Features of emAS

• Robust solution with multiple modes of authentication possible, including adaptive authentication • Management of identity and access feasible for hybrid IT environments • Platform-agnostic • Mobility-enabled for powering mobile authentication options

• Processing time of 6 milliseconds

• Strong brand reputation in the identity and access management market in India with marquee customer names

• Innovative product road map with additional compliance features, such as FIDO, planned


Other applications of emAS include incorporation into internal and customer-facing portals by several government agencies, such as the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals, and the Center for Railway Information Systems, and validation of digitally signed forms on MCA, Income Tax, and Goods and Services Tax portals.

FIGURE 9: emAS Suite — Deployments in Select Government Departments in India


3. emCA — Public Key Infrastructure Management Suite

This solution allows organizations and government departments to issue and manage the life cycle of digital signatures and enables the deployment of Root, Public, and Private Certifying Authority for secure identity and transaction management. emCA is undergoing EAL 4+ Certification and supports RSA as well as ECC algorithms in the certificate issuance process. Further, emCA can issue up to 8192 bit keys and provides a robust RA module for effective life-cycle management of multiple certificate types. emCA also supports IoT certificates and, recently, video verification for streamlined certificate delivery. The suite currently manages the operations of eMudhra as an issuing CA for crypto token–based signatures and one-time signatures in the Indian market. It also supports the company in its digital signature management in Mauritius and powers private CA setup that is currently in use in the Indian defense sector for sensitive use cases.


The solution is web-based and comprises modules such as emCA Certificate Manager (that helps in the creation of Root CA, Issuing CA, Policies, CRLs), RA/CA portal, timestamping, and OCSP client and responder. Some of the key features include:

• Easy UI to set up and manage CA • Encrypted communication with third-party applications

• Supports SCEP and CMP • Ability to connect with multiple HSMs • Multiple CA management (user group–driven) • Key management • Application-based self-backup

• Support RSA & ECC algorithms • Standards compliant (EAL, RFC, OWASP, etc.) • RA and end-user modules • Tamper-proof logs

The top differentiator lies in its ability to support multiple IDs based on which digital signatures can be issued — bank ID, tax ID, national ID, and other state-issued identification. Additionally, it is a highly scalable solution with a peak issuance of 150 TPS for Aadhaar eSign.

4. emStream — Fraud and Risk Analytics

eMudhra also engages with several banks and government agencies in fraud detection and risk management mechanisms through several methodologies that include adaptive authentication text/sentiment analytics as well as predictive analytics. The company has a security and analytics center of excellence (COE) in Bangalore that boasts a 100-member strong team working on emerging technologies in this area. With an in-house natural language processing engine matured over several years, and strong expertise in the Big Data and analytics technology stack, such as Apache Spark, Hadoop, MongoDB (with R), and so forth, eMudhra's COE has developed an innovative platform; using which, complex patterns can be easily uncovered across vast amounts of data. Business users can easily identify correlations, automate the machine learning process, and effectively apply the same from a large volume of data customer experience or risk mitigation initiatives without having to write a single line of code. emStream has been enhanced to support Image analytics for use cases in surveillance and establish identities in Images to be used for analytics purposes.


Considering the Distinctive Capabilities of eMudhra

1. Market leadership and brand reputation. eMudhra is India's largest digital signature certifying authority with engagements in more than 400 enterprises in the country, including the top tier private and public sector banks, financial services, IT and ITeS, governments, and manufacturing companies. Besides, it has the unique distinction of being a partner in several government projects, such as Aadhar, GST, tax filing, MCA modernization, Smart Cities, and a host of others.

2. Solution in sync with the market needs. eMudhra has carved a niche for itself in the digital signature, paperless transformation, and identity management solutions. These solutions are, in fact, the building blocks of a significant number of DX initiatives across several industry verticals.

3. Flexible commercial/engagement models. eMudhra ensures that organizations across all revenue sizes, locations, and unique requirements (with regard to compliance, internal control, and so forth) can benefit from the solution.

4. Robust solutions and innovation framework. The solutions offered by eMudhra in the areas of digital identity, security, analytics, and digital signature workflow management are comprehensive and support a wide variety of use cases, platforms, and devices. There is an innate innovation and product development framework for each of the solutions — these are marked by a clear understanding of the future market needs and strong delivery capabilities through its COE in Bangalore.

Its incubation center in Bangalore has been working on solutions in emBlock (blockchain) and emSecure (a device identity management and authentication system for IoT devices and Smart Cities).

5. Partnerships. It has alliances with a number of application and technology vendors, such as Salesforce, IBM, Oracle, Samsung, Intel, Thales, and SAP, to integrate paperless workflows. In addition, the partnerships extend to prestigious international bodies, such as UN/CEFACT (for egovernment, including blockchain, IoT), Asia PKI Consortium, Cloud Signature Consortium, and FIDO Alliance.

Concluding Remarks — Considerations for the CIO Community

Digital transformation must be leveraged by organizations as an opportunity, and not treated as a disrupting force to be feared and avoided. IDC recommends the following for the CIOs/IT/DX leaders within organizations:

• Planning. As the starting point, identify, list, and prioritize your business strategic objectives. These must be thought out keeping in mind a longer-term horizon. These


strategic objectives must be converted into actionable activities for effective outcomes. Rushing straight into DX and technology implementations will not simply help — it will

only add fuel to the fire of prevailing confusion.

• DX sponsorship. Business leadership must provide sponsorship to the DX initiatives — without this, the approach toward DX would not be integrated; teams would function in a siloed manner.

• Digitization. This could be a starting point for a chunk of organizations in verticals such as manufacturing, financial services, retail, and others. There must be a consideration for processes that can be digitized (if not done already) and automated. Adequate provisions must be made to transform the processes to a paperless one and embedded with security/identity and access management.

• Partner of choice. CIOs must consider the services of a partner that has proven capabilities around content and workflow management, security, and analytics. The partner must have a repertoire of enterprise clients in the country and globally. In addition, the partner must have an innovation and consultative approach toward solving the issues of the CIO community at hand.

Sandeep Kumar Sharma Associate Research Manager — Software & IT Services, IDC India

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IDC VENDOR SPOTLIGHT - eMudhra

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