Are you a company that relies on individual signatures and heavy paperwork?
Digital signatures and documents are now inevitable across industries, between companies, and even in the department. Whether it’s a healthcare industry, finance, or HR, managing the legal spending, invoices, and laws requires an unavoidable amount of paperwork.
As companies grow, the relationship gets complex, sensitive resulting in global documents that containing sensitive information. Paper-based processes are unable to cope with the growing company structure, and hence it’s one of the reasons for the delay in scaleup of the company.
What are digital signatures?
Legal in many countries like the US and Europe, a digital signature is a PKI-based digital certificate, authenticating the signer’s identity to electronically transmitted documents. Unique to every signer, it offers extra security, assures the integrity of documents.
Working of digital certificate:
Consisting of a broad set of solutions, Digital Signatures are electronic signatures that use an electronic process for accepting documents or transactions with signatures. It uses PKI certificates from trusted CA, encrypts binding of signature to document to ensure identity, authentication, and document integrity.
A standard for digital identity authentication and encryption, PKI uses two related key pairs: a public key, and a private key. It uses cryptographic algorithms to encrypt and decrypt a message. Signer identity is secured, using the pair of the public and private keys, providing a unique identity to signers, with its timestamp.
You can either create a digitally self-signed document or use the solutions of a trusted CA. Here is a simple illustration of creating a digitally signed document.
- Select the document to be digitally signed.
- Senders device calculates a unique value for a file.
- An encrypted hash value along with the private key creates the digital signature.
- The receiver is sent with the original file along with the digital signature.
- The receiver device receives and decrypts the digital signature using the sender’s public key.
- The receiver sends an acknowledgment for the received file.
The legality of digital signatures:
For your certificate to be legal, you will require to have three key components.
- Integrity: Digital signatures ensure integrity in terms of data. It ensures the data remains the same and is secured at both sources.
- Authenticity: It ensures authenticity by cross-checking the data source and destination to prevent tampering and fraud tricks.
- Non-repudiation: It offers non-repudiation by ensures a valid signature source, without the signer dyeing the signing document.
Why go with digital certificates?
Digital signature easily manages an enormous number of legal relationships, that involve multiple documents. Moving on with digital signatures instead of paper-based form filling gives you the strength to scale your business and makes it virtually possible to match productivity and expense reduction to today’s global demands.
1. Scale:
With enormous pressures for sales, contracts, offer letters, account openings, invoices, preparing and managing agreements, the digital signature accelerates the deal process, eliminating paperwork.
2. Security:
Since the data encryption algorithms use PKI (public key infrastructure) and unique encryption algorithms, it protects from middle man attack and signatures hacking. Using applications or public keys given by CA encourages clients to entrust you.
3. Adaptability and customization:
Digital signatures can adapt to your business obligations, and customized themself to your various needs. You can also create your digital certificate for a private or specific small group of clients to access your documents.
4. Efficiency and integrity resources:
It improves business efficiency by working with business processes. The PKI keys and cryptographic algorithms guarantee the safety and integrity of data and documents, by not allowing hackers to hack the data or network.
5. Sign from anywhere:
Offers flexibility to sign from anywhere, any device, and any time. Send the documents via email gets or apps, it works as expected.
Digital Signatures provide instance visiblity to the status of the document. Once the receiver receives it, he can send the acknowledgment. Digital signatures are available in different languages with various templates. There are companies that provide you with digital signatures using their private key. For insights, signers can use their application that provides you data insights or analysis reports of your data consisting of digital signatures.
Industries using digital signatures:
Digital signatures are used for online documents, improving the efficiency and security of critical business transactions.
- Contracts and legal bindings: Since an authenticated signature is required for the legal bindings, these are best for the legal documents. Along with the assurance that the document is signed it also ensures the documents are safe and not tampered with.
- Law: Seller and buyers’ identities are authenticated, by signing contracts and sales agreements between parties automatically makes them agree to terms and conditions of legal bindings.
- Financial Documents: Since digitally signed invoices, identifies the right seller, and removes the middlemen or fraud account tampering with the data, it gains trust in the financial transactions.
- Healthcare: For Industries dealing with data privacy for both parties, digital acts as a security instrument to secure the data.
- Government forms: Digital signature streamlines the process and increases productivity by involving the right employee at appropriate levels for approvals. Following strict guidelines and regulations around the clock, digital signatures are a perfect fit for all the federal and state requirements.
- Shipping: Digitally signed shipping documents during transit are easily accessible, full access to file with updated signatures and traveling requirements confirms the authenticity of data for their next journey.
Take away:
In a hyper-connected world taking your business to next level is easy by incorporating digital signatures into your business process. It has been changing the face of business and the lives of many clients. The legality of electronic signatures is recognized for more than a decade.
Trust is always an essential factor for the business. Along with the trust digital signatures provided by CA or other leading companies offer added security, high standard in terms of security.
Globally digital signatures are widely recognized as the security protocol offered by CA’s are in line with international standards.
Since digital signatures withstand stringent independent verification, they have a strong foothold in many countries and industries
