Digital Signatures for Departments

A digital signature is an encrypted electronic signature that can guarantee the origin of an electronic document, its integrity, and its authenticity. When you manually sign a document, you guarantee your agreement to the text content. A digital signature does the same thing and adds even more information. It guarantees signature authenticity by proving that you are the person who signed, it ensures document integrity, meaning that it has not been modified since the signature, and also confirms that the sustainability of the document, ensuring its validity for years to come.

Difference between a digital and an electronic signature :
An electronic signature consists of blocks of information that identify you. A digital signature is a form of electronic signature that is more secure because it is encrypted and can be invisible. It protects many elements of your documents.

Notarius digital signatures are used to sign official documents and meet the standards of many countries. However, each jurisdiction may have specific requirements that must be met in order to be recognized. For example, in France, many agencies will only recognize French certificate authorities. In the United States, requirements for authenticating engineering documents will mostly be limited to a technological baseline, but not specific to a provider or a standard. As such, Notarius digital signatures meet or exceed the minimum requirements for all US states (except Hawaii). It is important to verify local digital signature requirements with recipients prior to submitting signed documents that use Notarius digital signatures.

Of course, other considerations need to be evaluated before making a digital shift. Please feel free to reach out to Notarius for a working session on the subject for further discussion.

A signed document can be marked up but cannot be easily altered. If a digitally signed document were to be altered, the digital signature would be removed from the file, thus rendering the document a copy of the original. For example, in paper form, a wet signature original can be photocopied, thus creating a copy of the original and this copy can be easily modified and altered. The same is true for an original electronic PDF with a digital signature. It can be “reprinted” as a PDF and the new document then becomes a copy of the original. This copy can be altered but, for the recipient, it is a copy since the digital signature is no longer part of the PDF.

Most companies start with a pilot project to test out the solution with a few people over a two to three-month period. At that point, companies often present a profitability analysis report, obtain a budget and then proceed to plan the company-wide deployment. The full process takes between six months and one year, based on the company. Don’t get discouraged if things seem to be taking a long time; it’s normal and we expect the deployment to occur gradually.