FAQ

Izimi, for whom?

Because IZIMI is highly personal, the system must be able to identify the user in a unique way. At the present time, that is possible only for persons having a Belgian identity. Digital applications such as IZIMI can ensure this identification by using secure and reliable identification mechanisms such as eID or Itsme®.

N.B.: only eIDs delivered in Belgium may be used for identification.

My Izimi and my contacts

At the time of your registration or at a later date, you may indicate your reference notary. When notarial services start via the platform, the reference notary will be automatically presented to you as the notary who will handle the settlement of your case. Rest assured that you may easily change your referring notary at any time.
You can easily consult your referring notary’s details via the platform. That means you are only a click away from your personal and trusted adviser.
If you have opted, during your lifetime, for a post-mortem transfer of your digital vault to your heirs (see question What becomes of my vault and its contents after my death?), a transfer of the contents of your vault will be organised by “a” notary (freely determined by the heirs) to all the heirs as soon as they have made the request to do so.

Privacy

Your vault is locked and stored on protected servers. Only you and the contacts to whom you have granted access (sharing feature) may access your documents.

Access to your account and document handling are recorded using the History function.

After your death, depending on your decision as to what will become of them, the contents of your vault will be destroyed, either directly (option 2&3), or after having been transferred to heirs (option 1) (see question What becomes of my vault and its contents after my death?)

Security

Izimi is much more than a platform for storing or sharing data. In addition to being a secure channel for communicating with the notary and all the other Izimi users, the notary’s office ensures absolute privacy and the system offers you total transparency. In the near future, Izimi will also be able to provide certainty of authenticity of digital documents (paid service), both for Izimi users and third parties. In the future, you will even be able to be proactively informed of legal changes that have an impact on your personal and/or professional situation. In this way, you can optimise/update your deeds and documents at the appropriate time with your notary’s help.
You notice that Izimi is entirely based on the values and trust that you and many others have built with the notarial profession over the years.

Fednot has implemented a secure development approach with the aim of protecting information and assessing the risks involved in the Izimi application. The development team attended a security training course. The Izimi application was extensively tested by leading players in the security world.

The penetration tests were performed:

for the Internet application, according to a methodology based on an established standard and documented best practices such as the OSSTMM, PTES and OWASP testing methods and standards.
for the mobile application according to OWASP Mobile Application Security Verification Standard (MASVS) Level 2 (v1.2).

You, and not the platform, decide which information is shared with whom. You may even determine for each document whether it may be shared or not, in order to avoid unpleasant situations. You also decide when you wish to stop the sharing of documents.

After your death, depending on your decision as to what will become of them, the contents of your vault will be destroyed, either directly (option 2&3), or after having been transferred to heirs (option 1) (see question What becomes of my vault and its contents after my death?)

Izimi has high standards to ensure your security and privacy. Izimi is also built around the ideal of total transparency. You always know what has happened to your data and at what time, because all the system’s actions are monitored and displayed in a practical history. You also decide who to add as a contact. Furthermore, within the platform, there is no doubt about a person’s “authenticity” since everyone is identified in a unique way.

You receive a document from your notary? You can be certain that the notary is really the one who sent you the message and nothing has been hacked while in transit. When using e-mails, you can never be certain that no one has tampered with key information while in transit.

Your documents are in the cloud:

Storage in the cloud means that your data and documents are stored and can be accessed via the Internet (in Izimi datacentres) and not on your computer or your personal storage.
If something goes wrong (theft or destruction of your computer), your most critical data remain safe and secure and you can access them securely from your favourite place.

Izimi datacentres are to be found here, in Belgium: at Fednot, which manages the applications of all the notaries in Belgium.

Each document you save in Izimi is hosted in 3 different places, here in Belgium.
Your data are replicated between these 3 datacentres far from each other. In this way, if an event occurs (the fall of a comet, a nuclear explosion, etc.) in one of these sites, your data stay safe and secure and you can access them.
We have designed Izimi in such a way that it is redundant, so that if an Internet connection problem arises at a given moment, there is always a back-up.
The datacentres have 3-level certification. That means that their uptime is 99.982%. They are also in possession of other certifications such as ISO 27001, ISO 22301, ISO 14001, ISO 9001, 100% green energy certificate and many more.

You have to provide proof of your identity (authentication) to access your vault. In order to do so, we use the best solution available in Belgium, recognised by the EU: BOSA FAS (Federal Authentication Service). This is a very sound authentication system, more than any identifier/password combination.

Secure authentication — eID or Itsme®
With Izimi, we do not save any user password. We use eID or Itsme for each authentication.
eID and Itsme enable a “secure connection”, i.e., “Digital security and privacy of the highest level”. With Itsme, for example: “your digital identity can only be used on your smartphone, with your mobile number and your installed itsme® app. A unique combination which only gives you access to your personal data.”
To learn more about:
- Itsme®, consult the site https://www.itsme.be/
- eID consult the site https://eid.belgium.be/
2-factor authentication
The inclusion of two-factor authentication is part of the Itsme or eID connection. That means that you have to know a piece of data (your PIN code) plus something you possess (your smartphone or your Belgian eID) in order to access Izimi). When you connect to Izimi, you have to use the eID or Itsme to be able to access your vault and your documents.

Each document that you store in Izimi is split into small, encrypted fragments. All these small fragments are distributed over many disks, in such a way that if someone should take possession of a disk, even after centuries of decryption of fragments, it would still be impossible for anyone to access your documents, since they would only have tiny fragments.

All the documents uploaded to Izimi are subject to prior control. That means that we check each added document to make sure that it does not contain any malware or virus. Even if a virus should slip through the net, the files are immediately saved in a non-executable environment — imagine they are frozen in time, even if they contain a virus, the virus cannot spread.

As soon as you connect to Izimi and you begin uploading your documents, we encrypt them. That means that all data in transit are encrypted in a secure way.

Sector standards apply for HTTPS and TLS encryption, i.e., the connection between your computer and Izimi is permanently secured.

Izimi applies the same SSL encryption level as the safest sector to ensure the protection of data in transit (“the application accepts only TLS 1.2 or higher”). If you would like to know more about SSL encryption, please consult the site https://www.digicert.com/ssl/

We encrypt your data once again when they reach Izimi, in order to be absolutely certain that no one can lay a hand on your documents.

All data, particularly scanned or downloaded documents, stored in the database, are encrypted using the 256-bit AES technique. In this way, if someone does however manage to access a server illegally, the hacker could still not access stored data.

Access to Izimi

Documents

It is up to you to choose the documents to be stored in your electronic vault.

You have freedom of choice. A restriction on the types of files has been integrated to guarantee your security. The following types of files are allowed:

*.7z *.ai *.bmp *.csv *.doc *.docx *.gif *.gz *.heic *.jpg *.jpeg *.md *.odp *.ods *.odt *.pdf *.png *.ppt *.pptx *.psd *.rar * .raw *.rtf *.tar *.tif *.tiff *.ttf *.txt *.vsd *.vsdx *.xls *.xlsx *.zip *.avi *.css *.dot *.dotx *.dwg *.dxf *.eps *.emf *.eml *.html *.htm *.json *.log *.mov *.mp3 *.mp4 *.mpeg *.mpg *.msg *.oft *.pot *.ps *.svg *.vsd *.wav *.wmf *.xps *.xlstx *.xml

It is not possible to store documents such as password-protected excel files at the moment. We have anti-virus software that scans every document loaded on Izimi to prevent documents containing potentially malicious scripts from being loaded onto the platform. In this way we can guarantee the security of our users in order to prevent a user from sharing an infected file and one of their contacts from opening the infected file in turn.

Cost

Basic IZIMI services are offered free of charge by the notarial profession to every Belgian citizen.

These basic services currently consist of:

accessing your notarial deeds since 2015,
storing your documents and organising your personal vault, adding / managing IZIMI contacts,
being able to share documents from your vault securely with your IZIMI contacts.

Later, other models will be available, for example, to add storage volume, add new categories, leave a document to be certified and even more services.

Ease of use

When you upload your documents, it is possible for you to assign them to one or more categories (Private data, Family, My home, Real estate, Finance, professional life, Possessions, Health, etc.). You can easily add personal keywords that enable you to rapidly retrieve your documents. Compare it to a digital folder with practical post-its. You can use these categories and keywords to find your documents easily.

There are 3 options to decide on the fate of your vault after your death. If you already have a vault currently open, option 1 will be the default option (transfer to your heirs) but you may choose to opt for another option:

Option 1 (default): TRANSFER BY A NOTARY AT THE REQUEST OF HEIRS
Upon your death, a transfer of the contents of your vault is organised by “a” notary (freely determined by the heirs) to all the heirs, on their initiative.
Option 2: TOTAL OR PARTIAL SHARING BY THE CITIZEN
During your lifetime, you yourself select which documents you want to share after your death (and with whom) and which shall be destroyed = Total or partial transfer of documents. When you manage your documents in your vault, you directly share the selected documents with the persons of your choosing. What has not been shared will be destroyed upon your death. The notary is not involved in this process.
Option 3: DESTRUCTION OF THE VAULT
By choosing this option, everything contained in your vault, which you have not previously shared, will be destroyed straight after your death. Even if a will says otherwise. Choosing this option therefore has irreversible consequences.

Whatever choice you make, the contents of your vault will be destroyed upon your death, either directly (option 2&3), or after having been transferred to heirs (option 1).