There common questions people have about digital signature’s security such as ”Can my digital signature be misused or copied?” or “Can we forge a signature?” Fraud is a common problem in the digital world, therefore cyber security is much needed. As a result, users ask themselves if they are safe.
In this post, we’ll cover why it is impossible to forge a signature carried out via electronic technology
Why is it so hard to forge a signature?
In theory, any type of eSignature is legally valid and will hold up in a court of law. However, it is advisable to add additional legal evidence to the process when closing contracts, therefore we recommend using our advanced electronic signature to add the extra layer of security.
Advanced electronic signature services like those offered by Viafirma include reliable features to protect them against threats. Let’s review them:
- Authentication: The signatory is perfectly traceable and he is uniquely linked to the signed document.
- Integrity: The electronic contract cannot be altered after being signed. If so, this modification will be detected and the whole process will not be considered valid
- Non-repudiation: The signatory cannot deny the authorship of their own signature.
Our signature will secure documents against possible threats. In the next section we will look at these threats.
Besides, any signed document with Viafirma will contain an audit trail that archives when and where a document was signed and by whom. It ensures information integrity at all times, avoiding any kind of manipulation. Therefore, this document serves as valid legal evidence in any court of law.
Why are eSignatures safer than wet signatures?
Documents couriered to a home or office for signing can fall victim to forgery. Besides, traditional handwritten signatures are hard to be verified. And that’s one reason e-signatures are safer, as they can be verified.
Each e-signature uses a uniquely identifiable, encoded mark. It has security features to verify the signatory and ensures that both the document and signature cannot be modified once the signing process is completed.
eSignatures cannot be forged
eSignatures are created via mechanisms that make them hard to forge as they are based on asymmetric cryptographic procedures using public and private keys from an algorithm. This means that:
- The private key is only known by the signatory, and is stored on the device or in the cloud.
- The public key is then shared with the recipients of the electronic signature.
The process for creating an electronic signature goes as follows:
- The algorithm outputs the private key and a corresponding public key
- A signing algorithm that, given a message and a private key, produces a signature, which is encrypted by the private key itself (so the digital signature cannot be forged without access to the private key).
- A signature or document verifying algorithm that, given the message, public key and signature, either accepts or rejects the message’s claim to authenticity
Viafirma to prevent eSignature forgery
Our services include many features to prevent forgery and identity frauds. When a document is signed electronically, Viafirma allows you to add different types of legal evidence (ID picture, utterance, biometric evidence, etc). Checkboxes are also supported so signers can express their consent with some terms from the document.
You can configure the signing process to obtain the location of signers, as well as to set the exact date and time thanks to our automated qualified timestamping service as we are now considered as Qualified Trust Service Provider by the Spanish Government.
Another aspect to emphasize is that once we sign electronically Viafirma will include an audit log with information from the entire signing process, and once finished this will be sent automatically to signers
In short, we can conclude that it is hard to forge a signature from Viafirma, as the inclusion of legal evidence will add extra layers of security to the document.