Digital Signatures
A Digital Signature provides a layer of validation, working nowadays as a standard element of cryptographic protocol suites, commonly used for software distribution, financial transactions, and contract management software.
Digital Signatures are based in three concepts:
- Efficiency (being a much shorter signature, saving time hashing rather than signing in practice)
- Compatibility (although messages are typically bit strings, signature schemes may operate on other domains)
- Integrity (providing a layer of validation and security through non-secure channels, being considered computationally infeasible by most cryptographic functions).
With a properly implemented Digital Signature, any modification in the message after signature invalidates the process, making them more difficult to forge than the handwritten type and bounding the ownership to a specific user, assuring that the message integrity wasn’t modified and preventing the signer from claiming they did not sign it (non-repudiation of origin). Being applied to an entire document, the digital signature on the last page is able to indicate if any data on any page have been modified. This higher level of confidence in authenticity is especially determinant in financial contexts.
As organizations make early moves away from paper documentation and processes, embracing digital signatures are the next step in providing a superior quality in security, identity, and efficiency in regards of electronic document’s status, when acknowledging approval, consent and verification.
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