DOCUMENT SIGNING CERTIFICATE AND ITS IMPORTANCE
Digital signing certificates enable the digitally signing of Adobe, Microsoft office, and other types of documents. This will ensure the marking of visual trust indicators that verifies the publisher’s identity. This will also indicate that the document has not been altered.
Different documents authenticate at the time of document signing certification such as legal documents, invoices, engineering plans, and diagrams, diplomas, etc. This will help in secure and efficient electronic transmission of official papers. The digital signing reduces the cost of printing and maintaining paper files.
BRIEF HISTORY OF DOCUMENT SIGNING
The document signing certificate is the first-ever human document. Since a long time ago, people are using paper records, scrawling notes on walls, stone tablets, parchment, etc. In the present time, people are more engage in digital records and communicate via digital tools. With time the standardized languages and documents authentication methods have been developed.
In 1069, El Cid a nobleman of Spanish put his mark on military documents by signing his name and enabled that those who received it would able to identify that he genuinely writes it. This is one of the earliest records in the history of a notable person that used a handwritten signature for validating a document. The primary means of substantiating documents are written signatures.
In 1996 United Nations officially recognized digital signatures and because of the modern computerized world signatures have gone digital. The digital signature makes the work easy. People can sign emails, documents, and all other files through digital media. This not only improves efficiency but also authenticates documents which are the most secure method in human history.
Also Read – What is the difference between Electronic and Digital Signature?
WHAT IS DIGITAL SIGNATURE?
There are 3 main features of digital signatures:
- Identity assurance
- Data integrity
- Non-repudiation
When any recipient gets a document with a valid digital signature then this will increase the trust and confidence of the particular company. This gives the surety that the document is authentic and no alteration happened in the document. Identity assurance and data integrity are legally bound due to digital signatures.
The non-repudiation feature of the digital signature is of enormous benefit for those who want to use a digital signature instead of traditional and handwritten signatures.
DOCUMENT SIGNING CERTIFICATES
For securing the legal binding documents of Adobe, Microsoft office, and many more, Digital Signing Certificates support these documents with a digital signature. It can be created on any desktop for the real-time verification of the documents and it becomes a trusted seal. There are various formats of documents that are supported by the document signing certificate:
- doc
- csv
- ppt
- docx
- pptx
- odg
- odp
- rtf
- sxi
- txt
- xls and many more
The sender’s trust identity appears by Visual trust indicators that are shown to the recipient and this is verified by trusted Certification Authority (CA). After the verification by CA information cannot be altered during any transmission. Paper signatures provide the static prove of the document’s authenticity.
Digital document signing certificates provide the real-time assurance of the documents for a lifetime. If any changes made after the digital signing of a document that it will be easily indicated and render the original signature invalid.
Also Read – How to Sign a PDF Document with Digital Signature?
BENEFITS AND OBJECTIVES OF DIGITAL SIGNING CERTIFICATES
- Data integrity – Digital signing is just like putting a stamp or seal on traditional and trusted documents. In earlier times one could tell that because the seal would no longer intact so the message can tamper. The invention of the digital signing of documents makes the data secured and protects it from getting altered. The digital signatures of a person are just like a final stamp on the document which can be approved without any doubt.
- Trust identity – Almost every trusted digital certificate including document signing certificate requires verification by the third party which is usually carried by Certificate Authority (CA). to establish trust for document signing certificate, the generation of the root certificate is developed by CA through which software developers embed into their applications. The chain of trust between the certificate authority and software developers is that root certificate only. The signatures via digital document signing consist of the organization name, department, email address of the individual or group that signed the document. The recipient can identify it by seeing all the details and also who signed it and when it was signed.
- Non-Repudiation – The state of signing authenticity is known as Non-Repudiation which means in document signing certificate the digital signature must be undeniably authentic to be legally binding. The one person who signs the document using digital signature then only that person has control over signature over that time. The most important way to show non-repudiation with a digital signature is that only the signing party has control over the private key that is used to establish the identity.
- Lifetime Authentication – Certificate Authority has the ability to maintain the validity of digitally signed documents and also equipped the document signing technology for the document’s lifetime. The digital signature will become rendered if any changes take place in that. The changes give the signals that the document has been changed.
- Time-stamping – A digital time-stamp may follow while digitally signing a document. The time-stamp shows the exact date and time on which the document has been signed. When it comes to supporting the signature revocation then time-stamping will become critical and make sure that signatures are well valid after the certificate has expired.
5 KEY TAKEAWAYS
- A digital signature provides data integrity and identity assurance and it is much more secure than traditional handwritten signatures. It also shows some visual indicators which the recipient can identify easily.
- Adobe, Microsoft office, and many other documents can be signed Digitally Document Signing Certificates offer that. It enables users to easily and efficiently authenticate documents. The need for print, scan, sign, and email documents is eliminated by Document signing certificate.
- The time-stamping and non-reputable makes the document signing certificate more reliable and secure.
- The document signed digitally and became tampered then it will show the visual notification to the end-user that something has been changed and render the document signature invalid.
- A document signing certificate grants the added layer of mobility for those who use them and allow large institutes to engage with them.
