To do this successfully, consistent definitions within the documentation are necessary and clear roles for trusted third party participants defined. Appendix The following sections of text should be reviewed for purposes of clarification of the definitions of electronic and digital signatures and to ensure consistency for the reader. An electronic signature is simply the electronically transmitted equivalent of a handwritten signature. It cannot exactly replace a handwritten signature because no version of an original can exist. Nor does it possess the characteristics that would bind a signature to the text it purports to endorse.
Authentication is required at several levels.
One appropriate mechanism is based on public key cryptography and is known as a digital signature. By use of the digital signature, an electronic signature can be given properties that allow the same level of verification of identity of document source, of text endorsement by sender and of document integrity that the recipient would have been assured of if the document had been hand signed. Additionally and very importantly, the digital signature mechanism disallows later repudiation by the sender. Go back to the start of this document. Go to the library of current responses.