Document integrity and digital signatures
A digital signature seals the signed document to protect it against tampering.
What is document integrity?
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:
- no one has altered the original document
- the document you’re presenting isn’t a forgery
To ensure integrity, as soon as a document is electronically signed, Scrive historically 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).
What does it mean to “sign”?
Before moving forward, let’s clear up a common source of confusion regarding electronic and digital signatures:
- A document signatory, such as a person signing an agreement, creates an electronic signature when they sign the document by clicking to sign, or drawing their signature and then clicking to sign.
- A digital signature is like a fingerprint that is unique to that document. A digital signature is applied when sealing a Scrive document to make it tamper-proof and forgery-proof. 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:
- a method for encrypting documents: anyone can view your sealed document with a PDF viewer
- a method for securely archiving your documents: backup and storage is your responsibility
To learn more about the difference between these two terms, see our guide: Electronic vs. Digital signatures – Is there a difference?
PAdES: The European standard for sealing documents
PAdES is a European standard designed specifically for applying digital signatures to PDF documents. It is built for eIDAS compliance, making it ideal for use across borders and industries where legal assurance and long-term document verification are essential.
With PAdES:
- The document is sealed using a qualified digital certificate, which links the signature to a verified identity.
- The signature is embedded in the PDF itself so no external systems are required to validate it.
- Long-Term Validation (LTV) ensures that the signature and timestamp remain verifiable even decades into the future.
This means PAdES delivers the same core benefits as KSI like document integrity, timestamping and forgery protection, with the added advantage of being a widely adopted, regulation-based standard across Europe.
Whether your documents are sealed using KSI or PAdES, Scrive ensures they are cryptographically protected and independently verifiable, today and in the long run.