What is the difference between a digital signature and an electronic signature?
Sfax users sign documents with a “digital signature” and are provided a unique digital certificate (provided by SecureCare Technologies which is a Certificate Authority) at the time of registration. The digital certificate is tied to the digital signature that resides on the Sfax secure remote servers. Having a digital certificate on secure remote servers allows Sfax users to safely digitally sign faxes from any computer with an Internet connection. Users do not have to worry about what happens to their digital certificates if they change computers.
A ‘digital signature’ is legally more acceptable than other types of ‘electronic signatures’ as it offers both signer and document authentication. Signer authentication is the capability to identify the person who digitally signed the document. Document authentication ensures that the document or transaction (or the signature) cannot be easily altered. The process of creating a digital signature and verifying it accomplishes the essential effects that a handwritten signature does today for many legal purposes.
Electronic signatures often are nothing more than an image of a signature. Electronic signature implementations may offer no greater security than that of a password. Furthermore, with ‘electronic signatures’ there is no way of verifying whether a document has been altered since the time that it was signed so there not true document authentication.