Whitepaper | Shifting from wet-ink to electronic signature: 5 common practices to avoid
People are creatures of habits. We develop routines and rituals in every area of our lives from preparing breakfast in the morning to going to bed at night. They are comforting and reassuring; they give us a feeling of control and help us predict what comes next, which leaves us under the impression that we can also tackle it. If some of them are beneficial and worth keeping for the entire life, others need to evolve or change with time.
Since some of the habits affect the way we are working and conduct business, in this whitepaper, we will answer five of the most recurrent client questions and, implicitly, scrutinize the most common bad practices (if not, errors)* we observed when shifting from signing manually to signing electronically PDF documents.
They come from those paper practices so deeply rooted in our daily activities that we expect them to work in the digital world as well. In fact, it makes sense to see them implemented when signing digital documents; otherwise, we feel that something is wrong. However, digital signing has its own rules and mechanisms that render these practices obsolete. Therefore, ridding them will ensure a smoother and safer transition from paper to digital processes.
Here are the main questions we will tackle:
#1 Is adding initials (initialing) on every page necessary when signing a digital document?
#2 Is placing multiple e-signatures from the same signer on a single digital document really useful?
#3 Does the e-signature have to look like a handwritten signature?
#4 Is a printed electronic signature still valid?
#5 Can we mix handwritten with electronic signatures on a digital document?
* to be technologically correct, we refer here to the most encountered practices when using with certificate-based signatures in PAdES format.