Securing Long-Term Digital Signatures Can Help You Verify A Document's Authenticity

Online information systems allow organizations to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Although these systems typically add a layer of security to your business, it's best not to overlook protective measures. Document management solutions, specifically, require further defensive measures to ensure that valuable corporate data is protected from fraud. Digital signatures are one form of protective action inserted inside of each document to avoid a breach of data.

Security

When a document leaves a secure environment, such as your server, it can expose itself to hacker threats. It is quite easy for malicious actors to modify the content and create fraudulent copies. There is often no way to determine if a document is genuine or not, and most digital signatures do little to protect the document. However, creating long-term signatures with cloud-based business services makes it easier to create digital signatures and verify them at a later time.

Protecting Digital Signatures

Most people are familiar with digital signatures, but few understand that the average squiggle does little to protect them. Creating long-term signatures with trusted associates ensures evidence of approval.

Long-term digital signatures also provide the date and time, which adds an extra level of verification. This feature secures a digital signature by giving you something concrete to easily refer to. These kind of long-term digital signatures are verifiable by Adobe Reader. Using these modern security techniques, you can use many other accountability features to provide evidence of the sign and authenticity of the document.

Who Uses Long-Term Digital Signatures?

Long-term digital signatures are used by some of the most sensitive agencies. For example, the Food and Drug Administration requires digital signatures on sensitive documents including drug approvals and prescriptions for controlled substances. In Europe, the EU VAT Directive endeavors to protect documents and mitigate risks by using digital signatures. If these major organizations are putting their trust in digital signatures, what's stopping your corporation from implementing this security feature as well?

Today's businesses are filled with sensitive documents, making digital signatures a must. By protecting your data with consistent long-term signatures, you can verify the authenticity of document management systems. For more information on this security feature, or to implement a document management solution into your business, reach out to Matthijssen Business Systems!