Electronics Design
is different about them, how do they work and what are their inherent benefits?
Defining digital signatures
Using digital certificates, PKI technology and the organisation’s own authentication mechanisms, standards-based digital signatures (as opposed to simple electronic signatures that often offer nothing more than a JPEG image of a signature) create legally enforceable records. Not only are these fully secure, but they also provide long term proof of the identity and intent of the signer, as well as of the document’s integrity, and ensure that these are easy to validate and verify using widely available tools such as Adobe Reader and Microsoft Office. These features, which are built into any reliable digital signature solution, provide compliance with a raft of international laws and regulations. The main hard benefits cited by early adopters include faster and more cost-effective approval processes. Anecdotes from users typically talk about signatures
taking hours to collect instead of days for local projects or weeks for international projects, and significant paper-related cost reductions such as printing, filing, faxing and couriering. Less easy to measure but arguably just as important
(if not more so) are the improvements to business processes, which become more streamlined and efficient. Digital signature solutions can be integrated with workflow, BPM and ECM solutions such as SharePoint, OpenText and Oracle, as well as industry- specific solutions including Autodesk’s AutoCAD and Bentley’s Microstation. Taking that one step further and integrating with eDiscovery and records management systems, makes signatures easier to locate which is be important for audit trails and compliance requirements.
Implementation
Several vendors offer a variety of signature automation solutions using various deployment options including on-premise, cloud, cloud service and hybrid-cloud (where the digital signature is generated in the cloud, but the document to be signed remains behind the corporate firewall). Which option you choose depends very much on the individual company and its approach to IT, but implementing any type of digital signature solution can be fairly rapid, with users up-and-running in hours. Aspects to consider include: how
‘tamper-proof ’ does the system need to be; which applications are supported; whether signatures are easily viewable; do external parties need to download any software as well; is support for multiple signatures important; what regulatory, compliance and industry standards are supported; and ease- of-use (particularly if non-tech-savvy staff are involved). From a business-case perspective, another question is how rapid is return-on- investment – AIIM’s research indicates it is reached in less than a year for more than 80 per cent of companies, but of course this will vary according to each vendor.
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