Don’t confuse it with a digital certificate! This is the first step in learning how the digital signature works. It serves to validate the authenticity and integrity of a message, software, or electronic document.
Equivalent to a handwritten signature or stamped seal, the digital signature offers security and authenticity in electronic form. It is aimed at solving problems such as tampering and representation in digital communications.
If you still have doubts about the efficiency of the digital signature in your business, check out this post and clear up any doubts about how it works and the advantages of adopting this feature in your company.
The strategic value of digital signature for companies
For enterprises these solutions provide guarantees of evidence of origin, identity, and status of electronic documents, transactions, or messages. In addition, it also guarantees recognition and authenticity of what has been digitally signed.
To get an idea of the efficiency of digital signatures in companies, we can look at the United States. After all, there digital signatures have the same legal significance as more traditional forms of signed documents.
The U.S. Government Printing Office regularly publishes electronic versions of the budget, public and private laws, and congressional bills with digital signatures.
What’s behind the digital signature
Basically, digital signatures use public key or asymmetric cryptography to be created. A public key cryptography involves a pair of keys: one public and one private.
The two keys are mathematically related. The public key, as the name implies, is open and available to anyone who wants to access it. It can, for example, be stored on a public key server.
On the other hand, the private key is kept in a secure company environment, it will never be transmitted publicly. The sender of an electronic document uses his private key to encrypt that document, this is the digital signature.
Finally, the receiver then decrypts the signature with the public key to verify that it matches the attachment. In addition, the private keys are unique to each user, providing verified authenticity to the sender’s message.
Only the sender’s private key can be used to create the digital signature. The corresponding public key is used to confirm this signature, for which the digital certificate is used.
The use of digital signature optimizes investments and increases productivity
A digital signature can be used with any type of message, whether it is encrypted or not. It is used so that the recipient can be sure of the sender’s identity and that the message has arrived intact.
In this way digital signatures make it difficult for the “signer” to deny having signed something (non-repudiation). After all, the digital signature is unique for both the document and the signer.
The digital certificate contains the digital signature of the certificate issuing authority and binds a public key to an identity, and can be used to verify that a public key belongs to a specific person or entity.
Most e-mail programs, Internet browsers, and text readers, such as Adobe Reader, support the use of digital signature and digital certificate. This makes it easy to sign any outgoing email and validate incoming messages, or other types of digitally signed files.
Digital signatures are also widely used to provide proof of authenticity, data integrity, and non-repudiation of communications and transactions over the Internet.
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You can reduce costs with digital signature
By migrating their business processes to digital media, companies reduce paper consumption and the costs associated with printing and transporting documents. This strategy allows, for example, to direct what has been saved to strategic sectors of the organization.
And even increase productivity
Besides optimizing investments in the core business, reducing printing costs and using digital media for process automation also increases productivity.
Organizations and their employees no longer perform manual processes and can focus on core activities without having to stop their tasks to print documents or take them to different departments, i.e., it is possible with digital signature to achieve strategic gains throughout the company.
Can any company use a digital signature?
Finally you may be wondering if any firm or organization can get a digital signature. How is it obtained? Is it worth investing in?
To answer this question, it is enough to review the concepts that we saw at the very beginning of the article. In other words, when a user creates a document, he signs it with a unique digital signature and sends it to the recipient.
If the sender’s signature uses a recognized certification authority, in Brazil’s case those that are homologated by the ITI, within ICP-Brazil, the recipient will trust the certification authority to confirm the identity of the publisher. In this way it authenticates the message and provides non-repudiation.
So yes, any person, company, agency, etc. can and should get a digital signature. Moreover, it is a matter of strategic company security. In addition, there are several companies, known as certification authorities (CA), which manage the issue of digital certificates and are approved by the ITI.
As you may have seen, companies can only gain by adopting digital signatures in their business processes.
In the midst of the Digital Transformation era, adopting this technology means that the company as a whole, suppliers, and customers can benefit from strategic efficiency in relation to the sale of products and services.
If you still have any questions about the subject, contact EVAL right now. Our experts are ready to help you overcome your difficulties and start your digital signature adoption project.
About Eval
A EVAL está a mais de 18 anos desenvolvendo projetos nos segmentos financeiro, saúde, educação e indústria, Desde 2004, oferecemos soluções de Autenticação, Assinatura Eletrônica e Digital e Proteção de Dados. Atualmente, estamos presente nos principais bancos brasileiros, instituições de saúde, escolas e universidades, além de diferentes indústrias.
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