With the rise of e-agreements and digital signatures happening alongside an increase in online threats, customers can be concerned about the levels of security offered by e-signatures.
That’s why DocuSign has been blogging about e-signature safety, with a view to helping customers make the right choice.
“What makes DocuSign eSignature safe, compliant, and legally binding,” the vendor says, is that it “follows a compliance process to keep documents and electronic signatures safe”.
DocuSign’s electronic signature solution permits a range of methods for identifying and authenticating signers — meeting international electronic signature law as well as European Union (EU) directives.
- DocuSign authenticates the signer’s identity so electronic signatures are not forged.
- DocuSign eSignature documents are linked to the signer via an email address, an IP address, or other information.
- Changes to the contents of the agreement after it has been signed are flagged for all signing parties to see.
- Audit trails capture everything that happens to the document with time and date stamps.
- Because it is ISO 27001 certified, DocuSign provides bank-grade security and assurance.
- The Certificate of Completion is court-admissible and contains an audit trail of signee email addresses, timestamps and IP address.
DocuSign warns that some applications simply involve the pasting of an image into a PDF.
“This creates a document that has no real value. It is unsafe because the document is not linked to any assurance that it was signed by a particular person or any ‘proof’ to make the signature legally binding,” the vendor explains.
“Even worse, you can modify the content of the document after it has been signed and nobody else would be able to tell.”
Also, a handwritten signature can be easily copied or tampered with, but an electronic signature that follows security protocols such as those used by DocuSign cannot, the vendor explains.
The UK’s Law Commission confirmed on 4 September 2019 that electronic signatures are legally binding, including for deeds and government documents as well as legal firms and other organisations — such as banks.