Guide to Digital Signatures

What's the distinction?

“Electronic signatures” and “digital signatures” are often used interchangeably but each term carries a distinct set of defining features and functions. The broader category of e-signatures often includes digital signatures, which is a specific type of technology used to implement electronic signatures.

More specifically, an electronic signature is, like its paper equivalent, a legal concept. Its purpose is to capture a person’s intent to be legally bound to an agreement or contract.

A digital signature on the other hand refers to encryption/decryption technology and a subset of an electronic signature. Based on public-key cryptography, which generates two keys (public and private) using cryptographic algorithms, digital signatures secure signed documents and allow one to verify the authenticity of a signed record. A digital signature alone however is not an e-signature and therefore cannot capture a person’s intent to sign a document. When used with an e-signing application, digital signature technology secures the e-signed data.

What's the solution?

A solution that simply digitally signs documents often lacks feature sets commonly found in best-in-class eSignature solutions, including an out-of-the-box user interface (UI), as well as transaction management and advanced workflow customization capabilities used in more complex transactions that touch the customer.

The bottom line is that when looking for a solution to manage your signing processes, it’s important to ensure that it is built on digital signature technology to guarantee the integrity of the document and underlying signatures. Without digital signatures, your document-based transactions may not be legally binding, putting you and your organization at risk in the event of a compliance or legal case.

E-Signature Pioneer

25 years of electronic and digital signature experience and innovation to ensure you can achieve the highest completion rates for your signing processes.

 
 

 

Global E-Sign Laws and Regulations

Out-of-the-box support for requirements in the U.S. ESIGN Act, the EU’s eIDAS regulation, Australia’s Electronic Transactions Act and many more

 

An Enterprise-Grade Solution that Scales with Your Needs

The only solution to provide a unified platform and integration framework that maintains high security, compliance and performance everywhere in the world

Standards-Based Signing

Supports a broad range of local- and server-side signing certificates that adhere to global standards; instant interoperability with X.509 certificates issued by any TSP in Europe; support for signing with certificates stored on U.S. government Common Access Cards (CAC) and PIV (Personal Identity Verification) cards

 

Wide Range of Deployment Options

Deploy OneSpan Sign in a public cloud, private cloud or on-premises behind your firewall; fulfill in-country data residency requirements with global data centers

 

Security & Trust are at the Heart of our Business

OneSpan is a global leader in digital security and e-signature solutions. We believe that our 25+ years of experience in the IT security segment is a real asset to our employees, partners and customers – who can transact digitally using our solutions with trust and confidence.