Trust lies at the foundation of all commercial and administrative transactions, which for centuries have relied upon the handwritten signature for authentication. As transactions are digitalized, the signatures that provide trust in them must also become electronic.
The lack of trusted and legally recognized means of authenticating electronic transactions has forced a continued reliance on in-person handwritten signatures, undermining digitalization efforts by necessitating recourse to in-person interaction to complete a transaction.
In-person handwritten signatures in the analogue world are not a particularly secure means of authentication. When transactions are digitalized, new security issues arise, as the ease with which digital data can be duplicated or altered introduces additional vulnerabilities that never existed with paper. To address these concerns, electronic signature frameworks provide a means of authenticating the various electronic transactions in a way that facilitates the emergence of a trusted digital economy.
This policy note presents electronic signatures in terms of their four main functions:
- identifying the signer;
- attributing the signature to the signer
- recording the signer’s intent to sign, and
- assuring the integrity of the signed data and protecting against tampering.
Not all transactions require a high degree of assurance of all four of these functions. Indeed, for lower-risk transactions, attempting to assure a high level of trust in all four functions may be counterproductive, for example, if doing so leads to excessive cost or frictions for users that dissuade them from transacting in the first place.
Source: Worldbank