How can blockchain enhance the security and validity of digitally signed documents?
Documents or files that are digitally signed leverage the tech of asymmetric cryptography (PKI) to encrypt and decrypt data. In combination with algorithms, public and private key cryptography provides encryption, decryption, signing or verification of messages.
Digital signatures have brought the e-signing of valuable documents to an important level and provided a strong convenience for digital and online businesses. Still, they don’t come without detriments that impede a wider spread of applications and safety improvements for all parties involved.
Issues of digital signatures
In terms of privacy, digital signature tech fails to provide strong data protection, since it incorporates and stores a digital signature inside the signed document as its integral part. Checking the signature thus inevitably means getting access to the document and content in its entirety.
Similarly, since a digital signature represents an integral part of a document, the latter changes with every newly added signature. This means that if two or more parties need to sign a document, they should do it sequentially, and not simultaneously, which slows down the process of signing.
Currently, digital signatures are mostly integrated with PDF or Office files and depend their validity on just a number of central Certification Authorities (CA). This adds a notion of exclusive and restricted access to digital signature services, subsequently adding costs and dependence on a central time-stamping server.
Blockchain-added value
Blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology that can provide data authentication and security of data transactions by creating and linking immutable copies of data.
The word immutable is key in this context since blockchain tech combined with cryptography compliments the need for trustworthy and secure management of sensitive data and files at all times.
Blockchain as a decentralized transaction ledger by definition operates in a decentralized way, without relying on a central authority, and in the case of data verification, it serves as a decentralized reconciliation system. And since every new transaction depends on collective block confirmation, log replication adds a layer of resiliency to data transactions.
Despite being connected in a decentralized way, the blockchain is still a network that allows for storage and transfers of all kinds of signature proofs in the form of non-fungible tokens, from PDFs and Offies files to imprints of real-life assets. The ownership and transactional history of the signature are stored in data blocks linked with hash chains which protect their integrity and validity.
Unlike traditional data authorization systems, blockchain-based systems eliminate the need for external third-party authorities to certify the validity of data. Cryptography combined with consensus algorithms and proof of work also prevents reverting a transaction, altering the inscribed data, or covering tracks of such attempts.
Blockchain in the realm of digital signatures
The value and benefits provided by digital signature tech are indisputable, but there is always room for improvement.
A blockchain-based signature can provide information on the latest valid version of a signed file and the proof that neither the file nor its signature had been altered or tampered. Also, it can inform on the degree of uniformity between two or more copies of the same file, owned by different parties.
Furthermore, the level of transparency the blockchain provides for all its transactions and signatures combined with the decentralized distribution of information across multiple systems in a network could be of great help to services that deal with data auditing and inspection.
Even for industries that rely on strong privacy of data and are hesitant to adopt blockchain tech fully, blockchain-signed files can help protect the sensitive content while revealing only the selected proofs of signature and signers’ identities. Also, data transactions can be secured and kept private when private keys are employed by the signer and recipient of the signed document.
By enabling digital fingerprints and/or timestamps to files signed and transacted on the blockchain, a new layer of signature metadata is added to the signed files to increase its validity and distinctiveness.
Through hash comparison and verification, interested parties can inspect the legitimacy of several copies of a blockchain-based file signature, and further asses their validity by checking the timestamps, metadata, and the identity of the signer pertinent to the signature.
How to bring your digital signatures to blockchain level?
For businesses that explore new solutions and opportunities for improving safety and online management practices of their valuable documents, the best way to access the blockchain level is to integrate your current digital signatures service with a blockchain-powered digital signature API.
Such API enables you to retain the benefits, functionality and legal validity provided by your current digital signature service while adding several new powerful, blockchain-based features on top of it.
You can start leveraging the digital signatures of tomorrow by signing up for SignTag Beta API today.
