There definitely is! Nevertheless, the two terms are often used interchangeably. And to add to the confusion, some languages don’t make a distinction. But understanding the difference is key to asking informed questions about the legal validity of agreements signed electronically, including the integrity of your documents.
It’s very easy to confuse digital signature and electronic signature. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the differences between digital and electronic signatures to help clear things up. You’ll learn the key features of each term, examples of what they encompass and how they can be applied. Above all, you’ll learn how to ask e-sign providers to be specific regarding what their services include.
A digital signature, also referred to as “sealing a document”, is not a signature in the legal sense. Rather, it’s about document integrity, which means that in the event of a dispute, you can prove that: (1) no one has altered the original document, and (2) the document you’re presenting isn’t a forgery. It’s like a fingerprint that is unique to that document. As with our own human fingerprints, it’s impossible for any other document to have that same digital signature.
What a digital signature is not:
Whereas an electronic signature is evidence of the document signatory’s agreement, a digital signature is evidence that the document itself is authentic. They work in tandem, and both are needed to make a digital agreement verifiable and legally enforceable. Try Scrive for free
An electronic signature is a method for entering into a legal agreement in a digital environment. Think of it as the digital equivalent of signing your name on a paper document, such as a sales contract. A person signing an agreement creates an electronic signature when they sign an electronic document by clicking a button or drawing their signature with a mouse, touchpad or other input device.
An electronic signature according to the eIDAS regulation is defined as “data in electronic form which is attached to or logically associated with other data in electronic form and which is used by the signatory to sign”.
In US federal regulation, an electronic signature is defined as: “an electronic sound, symbol, or process attached to or logically associated with a record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.” (as stated in the eSign act of June 2000.)
There are various methods for expressing agreement, consent and acknowledgment in a digital environment, including:
Not all of these will qualify as an electronic signature, and which method to use depends on the situation. Because the legal effect of these methods can vary greatly, factors such as cost of implementation, ease of use (customer experience), legislation, company policies and assessed business risk usually determine which one to use in a given situation.
Even in the category of electronic signature, there are different levels, and which level is appropriate for a given situation will depend on the same factors mentioned above. These levels are explained further in the Scrive Trust Center.
To conform with global contract law, a signature, whether electronic or on paper, must fulfil three key requirements. If someone challenges the validity of a signed document, you must be able to show evidence of:
For both paper and digital documents, integrity protection is a key requirement. You can retain a paper original, but anyone could easily manipulate an electronic document and claim it’s the original. This makes the integrity aspect even more important when you use electronic signatures.
Document integrity means that in the event of a dispute, you can prove that:
To ensure integrity, as soon as a document is electronically signed, Scrive applies a digital signature, meaning “sealing”, not a signature in the legal sense. Historically Scrive sealed documents using Guardtime’s Keyless Signature Infrastructure (KSI) but our current standard for all new customers is PAdES (PDF Advanced Electronic Signatures), built on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).
For a deeper dive into how Scrive secures document integrity, visit the Trust Center.
You don’t create a digital signature yourself, it’s generated automatically by the platform you use to sign a document.
Electronic signatures generally fall into three levels of legal weight and identity verification. [See our full breakdown of Simple, Advanced and Qualified electronic signatures]
A common example is a cryptographic seal automatically applied to a signed PDF contract, it’s invisible to the eye, but any attempt to edit the document afterwards would break the seal and reveal the change.
A digital certificate is what verifies someone’s identity, issued by a trusted authority, similar to a passport. A digital signature is the actual cryptographic seal applied to a document, and it typically relies on a digital certificate to prove who applied it.
Scrive offers electronic signatures that the signing party creates when they click a button or draw their signature to agree to the content of an agreement presented in a digital format. Our signature creation platform collects all the evidence required for a legally-binding agreement: intent, identity and integrity. This evidence is saved with the signed document, and the final package is sealed with a digital signature, the method for ensuring integrity.
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