Unlocking the Power of Digital Signatures in PDFs

Digital signatures are like paper-based signatures, except they contain encrypted information to verify the signatory’s identity and that the document’s content has not been tampered with.

Select the “Sign” option from the toolbar to add a digital signature to a PDF. A popup will open, giving you three options: Type, Draw, and Image.

Security

Unlike traditional signatures on paper, online signatures link your identity to a digital document. As such, they are highly reliable and secure. This is why adding a signature to a PDF document is increasingly popular in many industries, including banking and finance.

As a business, the last thing you want is for a document with your important terms and conditions to get lost in transit or for someone to alter it to show different times. A digital signature helps prevent such incidents by encrypting your identity and making the PDF document unique to its originator.

Digital signatures also help to streamline workflows, from confirming contracts between businesses to collecting necessary signatures from new hires during onboarding. This eliminates the need for physical signatures and saves time by eliminating the need to scan and print the document.

A digital signature has a high level of security, which is achieved through cryptographic algorithms. This process creates a unique fixed-length number and letter string that is impossible to change. The hash value is akin to a fingerprint, uniquely tied to the document’s content.

Additionally, using a cloud-based signing platform like sign now ensures that your digital signature is always on the most up-to-date version of the document. This protects against data loss and is the highest level of security possible when creating a digital signature for PDF documents.

Reliability

E-signatures use advanced encryption technology and authentication measures to ensure the integrity of documents, protecting them from any unauthorized alterations. This makes digital signatures legally binding and compliant with various international regulations, providing businesses with airtight protection against fraud.

Adding an electronic signature to a PDF document is easy enough, but verifying the integrity of that signature is what matters most. A valid digital signature in PDF documents shows the signer’s identity, time of signing, and certificate authority. It confirms that the document has not been tampered with since it was signed.

This is achieved by creating a cryptographic hash of the entire document when it’s being signed and then using a public and private key to encode that hash into the PDF’s contents. The receiver can then decrypt that hash with the public key to check its authenticity.

A digital signature in PDF documents also often contains revocation and timestamp information. This can be useful in cases where internet access is unavailable when the document needs to be signed and validated, for example, if an employee signs a contract on a laptop while traveling. This information can be accessed later to verify the document’s validity.

Streamlining signature verification processes is essential to improving overall document management and keeping business operations running smoothly. Nanonets can help by automating identifying and extracting structured data from PDF documents, thus significantly speeding up the signature validation workflow.

Time-Saving

E-signatures for PDFs eliminate the need to print and mail paper documents, resulting in significant time savings. The process is also quicker and more reliable. It can be performed anywhere, even on mobile devices. It’s also easier to track signature status and completion, making it more efficient for businesses to manage document approvals and sign-off processes.

In addition to reducing costs, e-signatures can help you improve efficiency and reduce the risk of misplaced or stolen contracts. Moreover, they make collaborating with remote teams easily across different locations. This can lead to faster sales cycles, improved customer satisfaction, and increased revenue for your business.

Another benefit of e-signatures is that they create a digital audit trail, which makes it more difficult to forge signatures or alter documents. This is because a digital signature uses a cryptographic hash to verify the authenticity of documents. This hash can be decrypted by using the Public key, allowing recipients to check the authenticity of a document and determine whether it has been tampered with or modified in any way.

Lastly, e-signatures can help your company go green by reducing the amount of paper used in your workflows. This, in turn, can reduce the negative environmental impact caused by excessive waste, deforestation, and carbon emissions. It can also save you money on paper, printing, scanning, and mailing expenses.

Flexibility

A digital signature is an encrypted way to sign a PDF document that records when it was signed. This helps to ensure that the document has stayed the same and that the person who signed it is the author of the paper rather than someone who agrees with its contents. It also makes the record identifiable and traceable precisely, helping to reduce fraud.

With a digital signature, businesses can speed up their document signing process and close deals more quickly. This is especially important for remote teams, as it allows them to continue working seamlessly, even during unforeseen disruptions like natural disasters or pandemics. Moreover, it also allows for more flexible work schedules and enables document sharing across multiple devices.

E-signatures also help to reduce costs by eliminating the need for paper, printing and physical storage. This can significantly reduce the time, money and personnel spent managing and transporting documents. It can also help to minimize environmental impact by reducing the amount of waste produced from paper use and decreasing the negative environmental effects associated with the physical transportation of paper documents. Using a cloud-based electronic signature solution can also provide additional flexibility as it provides easy access to records and allows for a more mobile workforce. Employees can sign documents from any location and device, including mobile phones, tablets, Macs, and PCs.