Digital Signature: A Simple (But Complete) Guide

Digital signatures are an increasingly important part of the digital revolution and are now used for a wide range of applications, including software, contracts, and various other forms of digital documents.

A Digital signature is intended to solve the problem of how to validate the authenticity and integrity of a message, software, or document.

It is the digital equivalent of a handwritten signature or stamped seal but offers far more inherent security.

Today, I will be discussing what digital signature is, how they work, and how to create a digital signature.

1. What is a Digital Signature (D.S)?

A digital signature is a mathematical technique used to validate the authenticity and integrity of a message, software, or digital document.

It’s the digital identity of a handwritten signature or stamped seal, but it offers far more built-in security.

A digital signature is intended to solve the problem of message forgery. D.S. are used to verify the authenticity of software downloads, documents, and other electronic messages.

They can also be used as a way for a person to prove their identity.

2. How to electronically sign a word document?

To upload an electronic signature, open your Microsoft Word record and click on where you need to feature your signature line.

From the Word ribbon, pick out the Insert tab after which click on Signature Line withinside the Text group.

A Signature Setup pop-up field appears. Enter your facts inside the textual content fields and click on OK.

If you are a citizen of the U.S. you can sign in to DocuSign and proceed.

Electronic sign

3. Creation of Digital signature?

There are a lot of ways to create a D.S. The most popular way by far is to use a digital certificate. Other methods are to use a secret key, a private key, or a public key.

A digital certificate is a digital document that contains a public key and a private key.

The public key is useful to create the digital signature. The private key is useful to decrypt the digital signature.

It is important to note that the private key is only known to the person who created the digital certificate. It is not made public.

There are two types of digital signatures: Public-key signatures and secret key signatures.

A public key signature is when a message is cryptographically signed with the public key.

A secret key signature is when the message is cryptographically signed with the private key.

Create a Digital Signature

To create a digital signature, signing software, such as an email program, is useful to provide a one-way hash of the electronic data to be signed.

A hash is a fixed-length string of letters and numbers and is generated by an algorithm.

The digital signature creator’s private key is then used to encrypt the data with a unique and secret key value. The encrypted data is added to the message and sent to the recipient.

The recipient’s public key is then used to decrypt the data with the private key of the digital signature creator.

The message is then passed through a digital signature verification program and the signature is verified.

A hash is a fixed-length string of letters and numbers generated by an algorithm, which is then encrypted with a secret key value. The hash is an example of a digital signature.


4. How to add a signature in a pdf?

Today we are going to learn how to insert a signature into a word document digitally.

Specially, we do not need any special software or even the internet in this method we are going to learn.

We use only ‘Paint’ and ‘Word apps in Microsoft Office Package to create a signature that looks as natural as this.

Before starting, I have to say that the Digital signature & the Electronic Signature are two different things.

In a digital signature, we encrypt a file using a key as a security measure. An electronic signature means just an image of your signature and we insert it into an electronic document.

What we are going to learn today is

‘Electronic Signature’.

But I kept the topic as ‘Digital Signature’ since most people mean electronic signature when they say digital signature. This is my word document & we need to place the signature here.

First, we need to place our signature on a white piece of paper and take a photo of it and load it on the computer. These are a few pictures I have taken like that.

You see there are different qualities of them. If we have a good quality picture, that will make our work easier.

But, today I’m going to show you how to make a good signature even using a very poor quality picture.

If we know the hard way, we will be able to handle pictures of any quality in the future.

Ms. Paint App

First, we need to open this picture in Ms. Paint App. Right-click on this, go to ‘open with, then click on ‘Paint’. 

MS Paint

Or we can search for it in the search bar here and open it from here and drag the picture to the paint app. Ok. Let’s make this smaller. Now I have to remove the additional background space.

Click on the ‘Select’ tool here and then click & drag like this to select only the area of the signature. Then click this ‘Crop’ tool. Noticed the background will be removed.

Then go to ‘File Tab’ and select ‘Save As’ and then select PNG from here and save this in PNG format, which will allow us to do the required changes in the future steps. This is the picture we saved.

Now I click on the spot where I want to place the signature in my Word document and click and drag this picture there. Ok. Then make it smaller.

We are starting the work with this kind of a basic picture and you won’t believe that Ms. Word is going to take care of this picture and turn it into something like a natural signature.

Let’s make this bigger. Now I right-click on this & go to the last option, ‘

Format Picture.

Then these tools come to the right side of the screen and go to this ‘Picture’ icon, then go to “Picture Correction’. First, go to ‘Brightness / Contrast’.

Go to this ‘Presets’ and see whether we can automatically correct this picture at once & use it. If we had a good-quality picture we are done with this step.

But, since our picture quality is very low, this is not going to work.

We got to do this manually. Just click ‘Reset’ to remove those effects. Now go to this one, ‘Brightness’, and increase it until our background becomes entirely white.

Then go to the option ‘Contrast’ and adjust it. This makes dark areas darker and light areas lighter. We have to increase or decrease this as per the quality of the picture.

Then go to this ‘Sharpness’ and increase the sharpness of the picture a little bit. Now it’s done.

This is because we used a very poor-quality picture. Luckily, Ms. Word offers us enough tools even to change its color. I go down here, to the ‘Recolor’ tool and click on it.

Select color

Ok. Now you can see how better we have changed this picture compared to the original one.

There is one more thing to learn. I need to take the signature as close as possible to this dotted line.

But, as you see it seems impossible. and it doesn’t crash with the text on the document.

But, if we take it there only, it will look like a natural one.

So, this is how we do it. Click on this picture and you see this small icon. And go to it and click on this icon ‘Behind Text’. Now you can see that we can place our signatures anywhere we want.

This way, we can create a beautiful signature that looks like a natural signature.

5. Another way how to insert signatures in pdf digitally?

Signaturely.com is an easy way to create and sign documents with legally binding, digital signatures.

You can upload your own document straight from Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box.

Activate any or all of these in the Integrations.

Signaturely.com

Let’s prepare a document for me and others, starting with giving it a title and message. Next, there are a few ways to upload documents. After that, you’ll enter the name and contact of your signers.

Signaturely.com also lets you assign a custom signing order when necessary. And we’re all set to prepare our doc for signing!

This is where you can drag and drop signature, initial, and date fields onto your document, assign the fields to team members, and mark them as required.

Once you’re all set, send the document to your signers! They will receive a link in their email that allows them to create their own digital signature without a Signaturely.com account.

Bulk Send is a great option for sending the same document to a lot of people. Simply choose a template, upload a CSV of the recipients, and map the fields.

All of your sent documents land in your Documents tab.

The last thing I want to show you is how to create your own signature! Just head to Settings, and either create a new one by typing it, drawing it, or uploading it. See how easy it is to use?

6. How to add a Signature in adobe?

Adobe Reader is a software program that is used to view and print Portable Document Format (PDF) files.

It is a widespread document-viewing application that allows you to open, view, and print PDF files. Adobe Reader is available for free.

One can download the most latest version here https://get.adobe.com/reader/. It is totally free. 1. From a document, just click on the pen icon and select Sign Document.

Select the choice shown below and click Next. Now Fill & Sign from the ribbon and select Place Signature.

7. What is a Digital signature algorithm(DSA)?

A DSA is a set of instructions for creating a digital signature. The algorithm is used to produce a digital signature of the data that is to be signed.

The digital signature is then transmitted to the recipient. The recipient uses the sender’s public key to decrypt the DS and verify the signature.

If the signature is valid, the recipient is assured that the data has not been altered in transit.

8. What are the differences between Digital Certificates and Digital Signatures?

Do not be confused with digital signatures or digital certificates. A digital certificate is an electronic document. It contains the digital signature of the issuing CA.

It binds together a public key with an identity and can be used to verify that a public key belongs to a particular person or entity.

Digital certificates are issued by a Certificate Authority (CA), which is typically a trusted third-party entity.

A digital signature is an electronic document that contains the private key of the signer.

It binds together a public key with an identity and can verify that a public key belongs to a particular person or entity.

Digital signatures are issued by a person or entity, which is typically a person or entity that is a member of the CA. 

9. What are the different types of Digital signatures?

There are three different types of digital signatures:

The first type is Class 1 digital signatures cannot be used for legal business documents as they are validated based only on an email ID and username.

The second type is Class 2 digital signatures are often used for electronic filing (e-filing) of tax documents, including income tax returns and goods and services tax (GST), returns.

And the third type is Class 3 digital signatures are typically used for e-signatures.

10. Where are Digital Signatures used?

Government.

The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) publishes digital variations of budgets, public and personal legal guidelines, and congressional payments with virtual signatures.

Digital signatures are utilized by governments internationally for plenty of reasons, consisting of processing tax returns, verifying business-to-government (B2G) transactions, ratifying legal guidelines, and dealing with contracts.


Healthcare.

Digital signatures are used withinside the healthcare enterprise to enhance the performance of remedy and administrative processes, to reinforce facts security, for e-prescribing and medical institution admissions.

The use of virtual signatures in healthcare has to observe in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996.


Manufacturing.

Manufacturing corporations use virtual signatures to hurry up processes, consisting of product design, first-rate assurance (QA), production enhancements, advertising, and sales.


Cryptocurrencies.

Digital signatures also are utilized in bitcoin and different cryptocurrencies to authenticate the blockchain.

They also are used to control transaction facts related to cryptocurrency and in a manner, for customers to expose possession of foreign money or their participation in a transaction.


Financial Services.

The U.S. economic region makes use of virtual signatures for contracts, paperless banking, mortgage processing, coverage documentation, mortgages, and more.

This closely regulated region makes use of virtual signatures with cautious interest in the rules and steering positioned forth through the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act.

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