5 Things You Should Know about Digital Signatures

16
Dec
2013

Patricia Hidalgo

Digital signature technology has been around for a while. Unlike electronic signatures, which may be as basic as a JPEG of a handwritten signature and which don't offer a method for authenticating the signer, digital signatures are based on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology and provide proof of signer identity and data integrity. They also ensure against the possibility of a signer denying the fact that he or she signed the document. In the past, implementing PKI-based digital signatures was a cumbersome process that burdened IT departments with time-consuming and costly technical and operational difficulties. Luckily, that's no longer the case today.

Legal organizations across the globe are already enjoying the benefits of the secure, paper-free signing processes made possible by turnkey digital signature solutions. No longer do they need to revert to paper just for the purpose of collecting signatures from signers within or outside of the firm.

If you've already invested in automating your document-centric processes or are planning to do so, it will be worth your while to understand how quickly and easily your firm can start digitally signing correspondences, bills, contracts, agreements, and any other document requiring a signature using the same applications you already use today.

Here are five things you should know about digital signatures in order to finally close the automation gap and achieve truly paperless processes:

1. Are digital signatures secure?

Digital signatures offer the highest levels of security and enable you to easily validate that the signer is who they say they are and that the content of the signed document hasn't changed since signing, without requiring proprietary verification software. Well-designed digital signature solutions should also enable organizations to keep signed documents within their enterprise domain, never requiring documents to be saved on third-party servers.

2. Are digital signatures legally compliant?

There are digital signature solutions on the market today that support compliance with all of the strict industry standards and geographic regulations around the world, including ESIGN, UETA, EU directives and VAT law, FDA, USDA, SOX, and others.

3. How will my processes change if I adopt digital signatures?

Digital signature solutions should not impose changes on the way you work today. They should allow you to sign electronic documents using the same content authoring applications and file types you are already using, such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PDF and others. They should also integrate with popular document/content management and workflow automation systems such as SharePoint. 

4. How long does it take to implement digital signatures?

If you choose to implement a turnkey digital signature solution from a single vendor, implementation and deployment can be completed in less than a day. On the other hand, a digital signature solution that is built in-house and/or involves a group of technologies and services from multiple suppliers will likely take longer to deploy.

5. What are the key benefits of digital signatures?

Only digital signatures can enable you to automate signature-dependent processes responsibly and with integrity. By eliminating the dependence on paper for obtaining a signature, digital signatures enable firms to improve their efficiency by shortening turnaround times, reduce organizational spending by cutting down on paper costs, and increase client satisfaction by streamlining the collaboration process.