Digital signatures have been legally binding in the U.S. and the U.K. since the year 2000, but the legal industry continues to lag behind in adoption, despite the fact that other sectors have been using digital signatures for years.
What Are Digital Signatures?
Although the terms digital signature and electronic signature are often used interchangeably, the two can mean very different things. An electronic signature sometimes refers to a digitized image of a handwritten signature. Digitized signature images do not provide the security, non-repudiation, or level of authenticity required by legal professionals.
True digital signatures use a public key infrastructure (PKI). Under this model, signers have their own paired private and public keys (electronic codes), where the private key is used for creating signatures and the public key is for verifying authenticity.
