The current pandemic that has ravaged all countries has created the need to immediately migrate to working from home. Even before the current global crisis, organizations were seeking to innovate and digitize their businesses to save time and money. While not all work activities can be performed in a 'home office' mode, many companies and organizations that believed it was impossible have been forced to implement it to ensure business continuity.
However, this arrangement presents a substantial challenge: ensuring the reliability of operations and maintaining the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive company information.
In the remote work environment, it is important to maintain the reliability of operations. With many physical buildings closed, this creates a unique problem for businesses in processes where a handwritten signature is generally needed.
allows remote employees to securely sign documents at any time, from anywhere in the world and on any device. Therefore, this is the right time to implement digital signing, saving time, providing security and having the peace of mind that signed documents will never expire. Digital or electronic signing of documents allows remote employees to sign documents securely at any time, from anywhere in the world and on any device. Therefore, this is the right time to incorporate digital signing, saving time, providing security and having the peace of mind that signed documents will never expire.
What does digital document signing consist of?
Signing a digital document allows individuals and organizations to perform a cryptographic process on it, allowing everyone who accesses that document to verify the identity and authorship of whoever created it and at the same time ensure its authenticity, indicating unquestionably that it has not been changed since its generation. In this way, the handwritten signature of documents is efficiently replaced, as it is a procedure that can generally be performed much faster than in-person signing and enables the exchange of signed documents regardless of the physical distance.
Digital signing implies substantially greater security than other procedures, such as the use of scanned signatures or facsimiles, which can be easily manipulated and do not in any way ensure the identity of the signer. Digital or electronic signatures are generated using digital certificates issued under a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). The digital certificates issued by CertiSur are cryptographically processed by DigiCert, a worldwide leader in this technology, complying with all standards and certifications in the field.
To function, a digital signature requires the issuance of a certificate with information of the certificate holder to guarantee that the identity is accurate. This certificate contains a public key, which is used to verify signatures generated by its holder, and is cryptographically associated with a private key, which is only in possession of the signer. Certification authorities, such as CertiSur, validate the authenticity of those requesting a digital certificate before issuing it.
Muchos son los usos de esta tecnología. Desde hace más de 20 años, CertiSur ha montado
digital certificate infrastructures that enable the signing of purchase and sale contracts, online banking transactions, internal communications and emails, budgets and purchase orders, etc. As can be seen, their use is as broad as the needs of any organization that requires implementing digital processes to replace paper-based procedures.
The security of electronically signed documents is provided by the digital signature, which is actually a cryptographically encrypted hash that can only be interpreted using the public key contained in the signer's certificate. In this way, it is guaranteed that the content of the digital document, whatever it may be (text, photos, graphics, etc.), has not been modified and its origin can be verified by identifying the sender.
Digital document signing can be used in most available programs, such as Microsoft Office® (including Microsoft Word and Excel), Adobe® Acrobat and Adobe Reader, LibreOffice® and OpenOffice®. Digital document signing works with different types of documents, including PDF, DOCX, ODF and XML.
A very important matter is that the digital signature never expires. At any point in time, the integrity of a document and its authorship can be verified. Signed documents can also include a time stamp, which ensures that it has existed at a particular moment in time. CertiSur provides free Time Stamping service on its website through its own Certification Authority, thereby adding an additional element of security to digitally signed documents.
Try PDF Signer Try timestamping