When it comes to sending sensitive documents, you want to make sure that your information is protected. While email is an excellent way to send your files, this communication platform isn’t always secure. Hackers can still access your data and cause data breaches along the way.
To prevent this incident, you must find a modern way to sign your digital files securely. Doing so helps you minimize the right to lose data due to digital theft and reduce fraud. Aside from that, you can also meet compliance requirements to protect your company during transmission over other communication channels.
To learn how you can ensure the security of the digital document signing process, you must follow these five tips:
1. Use A Digital Signature
Digital signatures are a powerful way to authenticate your data. Unlike passwords, which can be stolen or forgotten, digital signatures are difficult to counterfeit and can’t be used more than once. Governments, banks, hospitals, and other institutions use this online asset to secure sensitive documents like tax returns and medical records.
When looking for digital signature software from sites like jSign.com, ensure ease of usability, especially if you share the tool with your colleagues. Next, look for advanced features like combining multiple parts into one document that different parties digitally sign at once. Instead of each party signing separate documents separately, later on, you avoid confusion by ensuring that all parties agree on the contents of a copy before it’s signed.
2. Encrypt Files Before Sending
When you don’t encrypt your data, you risk having it stolen by hackers. This incident means that if someone gets access to your computer system or files, they can easily retrieve any unencrypted data in those files. As a result, you’ll face the consequences like the loss of confidentiality, breach of regulatory requirements, and damaged customer trust.
Encrypting your signed documents can prevent anyone from seeing their contents, even if they intercept the file during transmission. To do so, use a private key encryption scheme to ensure that only the intended recipient can access and read it.
Also, you may use modern operating systems that have built-in support for some encryption algorithms. If you don’t know how to use these tools, then make sure that whoever receives your document knows how to decrypt it if they need to view its contents.
3. Know The Various Legal Requirements For Document Signing
You must understand the risks and know your legal requirements when receiving or sending electronic documents with digital signatures. Failure to do so might cause a potential loss of control over your document, especially if you’re using a third-party service for your digital signature. If that service changes its terms of service, you could lose access to your documents altogether or face unexpected fees or charges when trying to access them later on.
To understand the legal requirements for digital document signing, check the laws in your jurisdiction. Next, read up on common industry standards for digital signatures that may come from regulatory bodies like the international organization for standardization (ISO). After that, check your software provider’s documentation and ask questions if there are any doubts about whether they meet legal requirements for digital signatures.
4. Avoid Sending Documents Via Email
When you sign a document, you’re making a promise to pay or perform specific actions. If someone else has access to that document, they can also make the same promise. If you send a signed document via email, anyone with access to it could take over your responsibilities and duties under that contract.
If you need to send confidential information via email, send it in an encrypted format, such as a pretty good privacy (PGP) format. PGP uses public key encryption to protect your message so that only the intended recipient can read it. If an unauthorized user intercepts the document, they’ll see garbled text instead of a readable one.
An alternative to sending documents via email is using cloud storage services that allow you to store files online in the cloud to be accessible from anywhere. Using this technology, you can upload your documents and share them with others by giving them access to your account or by sending them a link. You can also set up automated backups so that if anything happens to your computer or laptop, you still have a backup of your documents in a secure place.
5. Enable Identity Verification
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a critical step in securing your business. The goal of MFA is to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive accounts after compromising a password. If you don’t use multi-factor authentication for your digital signatures and other sensitive accounts, you’ll damage your brand image due to the loss of confidential data.
An effective way to protect your digital documents upon signing is by using multi-factor authentication, which requires two to more steps to verify your identity. This process involves password input and an out-of-band verification where the recipient receives a one-time code through a text message or email. In addition, you can enable facial recognition technology to compare faces with stored images.
Key Takeaway
Document signing is crucial to your business, especially if you send and receive files electronically. To avoid data breaches and protect your reputation, follow these five tips when signing documents electronically.
