Industry Standard for Digital Transactions Now Available

SAN FRANCISCO, March 24, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Marking a significant step toward digital transformation around the world, the xDTM Standard Association today made the first Digital Transaction Management (DTM) Standard available to the public.

The standard was developed by the organization's participants over the past two years and was ratified by the cross-industry independent governing board. It provides in-depth guidelines and best practices that a DTM provider should address to create a trusted online environment for digital transactions. It also establishes eight core requirements for trust and availability that a DTM provider must adhere to in order to be compliant.

"The new standard enables DTM providers to establish trust and transparency so that organizations can capitalize on the speed, efficiency and convenience of digital transactions," explained Heather Petersen, executive director, xDTM Standard Association.

"At the same time, it promotes peace of mind for consumers by reducing risk and addressing how transactions are protected yet accessible when needed. Until now, no organization has established a target for what it takes to ensure a trusted online environment for digital transactions."

Arden Bement, former director of both the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Science Foundation, agrees, pointing out that standards have made an indelible impact on almost every industry.

"They provide expectations and clarity on operational performance, which provides more predictability for organizations," he said. "The xDTM Standard is at the forefront of emerging cloud standards – it will help provide assurance to organizations concerned about conducting sensitive digital transactions online."

According to the standard, the eight areas a DTM provider needs to successfully address include:

Security – features best-in-class technical protection, highly secure access, and proactive protection policies
Assurance – provides assurance that xDTM transactions are compliant with applicable laws
Privacy – allows a person or company to reveal information selectively, at their discretion
Validity – has a reliable, transparent and verifiable chain of custody, and a digitally signed, tamper-evident audit trail
Availability – ensures that transactions are always accessible and obtainable, high performing during periods of peak use, resilient across disaster scenarios, and free of scheduled offline maintenance
Scalability – accepts increased volume without impacting performance due to ongoing capacity modeling and proactive lifecycle management
Universality – functions across heterogeneous environments/devices and is accessible worldwide
Interoperability – works across collaborative services environments and includes integration guidelines and APIs

"Organizations must maintain customer trust, especially in today's competitive business environment," said Rick Echevarria, VP: Software and Services Group, Intel.

"The xDTM Standard provides a quality bar and guidance in terms of the best practices that organizations and customers alike can use to understand how digital transactions are protected. It provides assurance that they can safely conduct business transactions digitally, even in the face of constant change."

"Having a formal standard in place makes it easier for organizations and consumers to conduct transactions digitally," said Eduardo Perez, SVP: Payment System Risk, Visa. "It benefits everyone: business gets done faster and transactions are more secure and accessible when needed. The xDTM Standard will help to drive more adoption and expand the market for digital transaction management."

xDTM Standard-compliant organizations will have a certification mark so that businesses and consumers can identify the measures the provider has undertaken to provide quality digital transaction.

"As DTM matures, we're looking forward to more participation and input to advance the xDTM Standard and accelerate the adoption of digital transactions around the world," added Petersen.

Visit www.xdtm.org for more information on the xDTM Standard, and to submit comments that will help shape future enhancements. For other questions, including compliance, please contact info@xdtm.org.

Media contact:
Judith Vanderkay
xDTM Standard Association
+1 781-876-6208

About the xDTM Standard Association
The xDTM Standard Association is an independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to protect and empower organizations to transact business online securely. Digital Transaction Management (DTM) is a category of cloud services that enables companies to manage their document-based transactions digitally, allowing for faster, easier, more secure processes. DTM solutions help consumers and businesses complete transactions faster by automating manual, paper-based workflows for capturing information, payments, and signatures, thus eliminating the hassles, costs, and lack of security in printing, faxing, scanning, and overnighting documents. Organizations who have implemented DTM solutions report substantial ROI, improved security and compliance, and increased satisfaction and loyalty through better end user experiences.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160323/347653LOGO

SOURCE xDTM Standard Association