Can Digital Signature Help with Cybersecurity?

By CIOReview | Monday, June 29, 2020

Digital signatures are vulnerable to digital attacks. Hence, digital signatures must have its significance to protest them from hacking. Fremont, CA: The convenience and productivity offered by the software revolution also come with cons in the form of hacking and data breaches, particularly when it comes to e-signatures.

From traditional written signature to adopting e-signature software for businesses imitating a sign has become easier. Physical crafting of a signature is merely replaced with simpler stylus-strokes.

Protecting data is one of the main issues that IT experts and e-sign software companies have as part of their business models. But not all software solutions are equal in their working. Hence it is important to understand how to defend business and clients.

Digital signature

A digital signature is not the same as a normal e-signature and does not represent a formal physical signature and also not used in notarizing business and legal agreements. A digital signature is but a security tool with complex mathematical algorithms used to verify the authenticity and validity of a message or document sent across the internet.

E-signatures make use of digital signatures, so as to provide more security to the users. It’s a very basic function in the process to provide two sets of ‘digital keys’ for documents using a public key infrastructure system (PKI). The ‘public key’ comes from the sender of the document, while the second one is a ‘private key’, generated as the document is signed.

A notarized document will be back to the original entity, as the embedded cryptographic algorithm compares the two keys. If the keys do not match, the document remains locked. This is a simple encryption process, but an extremely effective one that ensures the security of an electronic signature.

Levels of Signatures

Three are three kinds of signatures to suit different purposes. They are certified signatures, approval signatures, and invisible signatures.

Certified ones are normal ones, while approval signatures are different from electronic signatures, as they just need approval and not necessarily a sign. In the case of invisible signatures, the sender might have to transfer such documents where the visual representation of a signature will not be appropriate.

On top of all these, there are three classes of signatures with increasing levels of protection. Class 1 - validated simply based on email ID and username, Class 2 - used for things like securing taxes, and Class 3 - caters for driver’s license, court filings, business agreements, e-ticketing, and other areas requiring a high level of security.

Before all these, the digital sign vendor in question should be using a strong cloud infrastructure; this is done by partnering with service providers such as Microsoft Azure or IBM SoftLayer. These are some basics, not to dwell much into legality and process.