Government Warns Kazakhstanis About Risks of Fraud

According to the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry, the number of instances of illegally using people’s e-signatures has risen.

In the period from 2015 to 2018, only 15 administrative violations of electronic document workflow were registered. In 2019 there were already 52 cases. Over the nine months of 2020, more than 30 cases of illegal transfer of e-signatures were reported. In five of those cases, certain measures aimed to protect signatures were ignored. To punish these violations, authorities imposed fines in the range of $66 to $985.

«Recently, the ministry has received a huge number of data and complaints about the illegal transfer of digital signatures of individuals and even officials. It is highly important to remember that an e-signature is the legal equivalent to ones’ signature and entails the same legal consequences,» said Ruslan Abdikalikov, chairman of the Ministry’s Information Security Committee.

As he noted, in many cases heads of government organizations do not cancel e-signatures of employees who have already quit, instead passing them over to new workers. These are illegal actions that might be punished by fines or even jail.

The ministry recommended Kazakhstanis to not transfer e-signatures to third parties and has persisted that in governmental organizations, all employees who are responsible for signing documents should possess their own electronic signatures. If someone quits this organization, his signature must be deleted immediately. If he just lost it, he should also renew his signature. The last but not least recommendation is to use a more complicated password rather than a simple standard one.

According to Kazakhstan’s legislation, everyone can receive a digital signature remotely, without visiting the Public Service Center. An application for remote receipt of a digital signature can be submitted on egov.kz – the government services portal. All the user needs to register is a computer with a web camera, as well as an original ID or passport.