Spanish telecom company Telefónica Tech announced Thursday that it launched a new documentation authentication service based on blockchain technology with legal support.

The technology will be supported by Telefónica’s own TrustOS managed blockchain service and combines the user’s digital signature with a cryptographic hash of the content to be certified. Both of these elements are sealed onto the blockchain to establish legal provenance and integrity of the data.

“The incorporation of innovative technologies such as blockchain in contract management and legal documentation, in general, is a key step for the secure digital transformation of companies,” said Luis Prendes, global director of legal affairs and digital legal transformation at Telefónica.

The company seeks to use this technology to replace inefficient systems such as paper documents, which are inherently error-prone, require multiple copies to be made and must be filed and archived and can be easily lost or damaged.

Telefónica said that its legal affairs department has been using the technology internally to monitor confidential information communicated with its partners. This way, whenever there is an incident or claim related to a potential breach of confidentiality, it can be easily demonstrated using digital evidence what had been shared, when and by whom.

“This innovative solution provides full traceability of sensitive information leaving the company’s perimeter and can deal much more efficiently with day-to-day problems such as information leaks and breaches of confidentiality clauses,” said Prendes.

According to the company, the document service has a multitude of use cases including for training attendance, trademark protection, proof of product ownership or receipts, multimedia content and copyrights, legal notarization and more.

Telefónica’s TrustOS solution joins a few other platforms that provide similar services. For example, JustChain provides a blockchain-based legal notary signing service. Storj Labs Inc. and CapLinked Inc. teamed up in 2017 to offer a software-as-a-service solution to securely store documents using blockchain technology. And BestSign also has a platform that provides blockchain provenance to electronic documents.

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