Enterprises need to protect their account and digital signatures

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Illicit goods were seized by Customs officers of the HCM City Department of Customs. Photo: T.H.

According to Mr. Vo Van Bong, the Director of the Customs Branch for Investment Management, when participating in e-Customs procedures, enterprises shall register online on the electronic portal of the General Department of Vietnam Customs. Every enterprise has an administration account (corporate tax code) and other user accounts to carry out electronic declarations and receive feedback from Customs authorities.

Each user account will include information relating to digital signatures which are used in the electronic declaration system before sending to Customs authorities. In order to protect the user account, enterprises should note the following issues:

Regularly change the password of administration account digital signatures. For user accounts for declaration which have not been used for a long time, enterprises should log on to the portal of the General Department of Vietnam Customs to eliminate these user accounts as well as digital signatures of these accounts.

Raising awareness and understandings of enterprises about provisions of the law on the responsibilities of organizations and individuals using digital signatures in electronic transactions; the account numbers and digital signatures should be strictly managed to prevent abuse by employees to carry out illegal import-export activities.

Besides, the computers used for Customs declarations should be updated with copyrighted software and antivirus programs and firewalls. This will make it more difficult for potential hackers to access information and gain control over the system.

In order to ensure security, computers should be decentralized for access authority and regularly implement data backup to ensure security.

If enterprises suspect their accounts and digital signatures have been illegally accessed, they should immediately inform Customs authorities to prevent, and clarify responsibilities and protect business interests.

In the case where Customs Agents are authorized to implement import-export procedures, enterprises should cooperate with Customs officers to provide information and verify Customs Agents. Or when Customs officers detect agents which are not on the list of Customs Agents that enterprises authorize for declaration of export-import procedures, Customs officers shall notify enterprises in a timely fashion in order to prevent bad situations.

Digital signatures misused for smuggling VCN- Currently, a number of perpetrators have made use of digital signatures of enterprises which have prestige ...

In recent times, through detection of smuggling and trade fraud by HCM City Department of Customs, Customs authorities discovered many perpetrators who are dealers or employees of enterprises making use of the prestige of enterprises and their digital signatures to carry out acts of violations relating to import and export for tax evasion.