Document e-signature and encryption services provide users with three different service editions: Starter Edition, Professional Edition. At the same time, they are divided into personal service and business service according to different user types. The specific differences are:
Provide users with Document D-signature Service is added. Users can use MeSign APP to digitally sign PDF documents locally using Adobe trusted PDF signing certificate, provide single document signing and encryption services, and multi-party co-signing service. The number of digital signatures for PDF documents is unlimited including the free timestamping service.
At present, almost all PDF documents were not digitally signed, and some documents may have an electronic stamp or signature. These documents without digital signatures are untrustworthy documents, because anyone can easily pretend to be an organization and post the same types of documents, even counterfeit and tampering with the official documents issued by the government. How to ensure the trust of the publishers’ identity of electronic documents? This is not only a compliance issue, but also a huge security risk, which can easily make people to be deceived, lost money and even lost lives. This is the problem that should be solved in the project of digital transformation of management.
At present, the only feasible solution is to use digital signatures on electronic documents to ensure that the identity of the document publisher is trusted, and to ensure that the document will not be illegally tampered with or counterfeited. Digital signature is to use a digital certificate to validate the identity of the signer and bind the signer's identity to the document through a cryptographic algorithm to prove the non-repudiation of the signing behavior. The signed document does not need to include the audit report for the signing process, and the identity validation of the signer was completed by a Certificate Authority (CA) or a Trusted Service Provider (TSP).
Document D-signature can certify the identity of the document publisher is trusted and prevent the illegal tampering issues. However, it is necessary to use certificate to encrypt the confidential documents to ensure the document security. It is because the user’s encrypting certificate is unable to obtain for illegal user, even though the electronic document has been leaked, the electronic documents cannot be legally used by anyone. This is why Article 34 of the GDPR states that as long as it is encrypted, the liability can be reduced in data leakage incidents.
One of the supported services for Document D-signature is the timestamping service. The default time in electronic documents is obtained from the user’s computer time, this time is untrusted which can be modified. Therefore, the release time of the important documents, including electronic contract signing time, all need to have an authoritative time that cannot be tampered with to prove the signed time of the document is trusted. MeSign Document D-signature service provides by MeSign APP is supported by the free authoritative time-stamping service which is trusted by Adobe Reader globally, to ensure that the document signing time is trusted, and cannot be counterfeited, repudiated and tampered with.
MeSign Document Digital Signature Service has the following eight unique advantages, and one of the biggest advantages is the global trust of all signed documents, and the second advantage is the protection of user privacy, not uploading the user’s document to be signed to the signature platform. Specifically:
Electronic Signature (or e-signature) is a broad term referring to any electronic process that indicates acceptance of an agreement or a record. Typical e-signature solutions use common electronic authentication methods to verify signer identity, such as an email address, a corporate ID, or a phone PIN. If increased security is needed, multifactor authentication may be used. The best e-signature solutions demonstrate proof of signing using a secure process that includes an audit trail along with the final document.
But, if the user sets to use the graphic of the handwritten signature, electronic signature has a problem that it is impossible to verify whether the graphic of the handwritten signature is indeed the signature of the signer. The signing parties of the contract only either trust the signature graphic or verify the authenticity of the signature graphic by other means. This is the deficiency of the electronic signature.
Digital Signature is one specific type of electronic signature, which is an improved and more reliable electronic signature. Digital signature use certificate-based digital IDs to authenticate signer identity and demonstrate proof of signing by binding each signature to the document with encryption, there is no need to include an audit trail along with the final document. The signer’s identity validation occurs through trusted certificate authorities (CAs) or trust service providers (TSPs).
At present, the most popular service providers, such as DocuSign and Adobe Sign use electronic signatures to sign the contracts online. The signing parties can complete the contract signing on the platform after finishing the email verification. But in order to ensure that the signed electronic contract files will not be tampered with, then the signed documents need to be digitally signed by the PDF signing certificate of the service provider. That is to say, the signing platform does not use the signer’s digital certificate to sign the documents. According to the electronic signature laws in some countries, electronic contracts signed with electronic signatures have legal effect. According to EU and Chinese electronic signature law, only the digital signature method has the same legal effect as the handwritten signature.
MeSign Contract E-signature Service only supports digital signature, and does not provide electronic signature, because we believe that it is not enough that just validate the contract signer's email address only, especially for signing contract online that the signing parties do not meet face to face for each other. MeSign Contract E-signature Service use digital signature method that validate the authentic identity of each signer, and automatically configures each signer with a PDF signing certificate of Adobe global trusted for digitally signing contracts. MeSince Document D-signature Service also only supports digital signature, validate the authentic identity of document signer, and automatically configures the signer with a PDF signing certificate of Adobe global trust for digitally signing the PDF documents.
MeSign E-sign Service uses Adobe trusted PDF signing certificate for Document D-signature and Contract E-signature with Adobe trusted timestamping service, to guarantee all signed documents and contracts have legal effect globally. Additionally, all digital signatures are Adobe LTV enabled, to guarantee the signed document’s digital signature is valid for a long time.
Similar to MeSign email signing certificate and encrypting certificate, users do not need to apply for a PDF document signing certificate from a CA. Users only need to purchase the Document D-signature services. Once the identity validation is completed, MeSign APP will automatically apply for a Adobe global trusted PDF signing certificate from the CA when user want to sign the electronic contract or PDF document and complete the Document D-signature or Contract E-signature automatically.
Users don’t need to apply for a document encrypting certificate. The document encryption functions provided by MeSign APP is to use the auto-configured email encrypting certificate to encrypt the document. Therefore, one encrypting certificate can be used for both email encryption and document encryption.
MeSign Document D-signature service is a charged service. Users can purchase the Personal Pro Edition or Business Pro Edition for Document D-signature service, MeSign APP will automatically configure the right document signing certificate of the corresponding validation level for free.
The document digital signature must have a timestamp to prove the trusted time of the document signature. Therefore, MeSign Document Digital Signature Service provides free timestamping service for MeSign APP users to automatically stamp the Adobe global trusted time signature on each signed document. In addition, we provide the free timestamping service for our E-sign API call users as well.
The MeSign timestamping service has the following 5 advantages:
MeSign Contract E-signature Services and Document D-signature services are all provided based on MeSign APP (Email client), except large enterprise deploy MeSign e-Signature System for automatic e-signing process in batch. There are four reasons:
The e-contracts signed by using MeSign APP has legal effect worldwide.
MeSign Contract E-signature Services supports two signing methods: electronic signature and digital signature. Although electronic signature only validates users’ email address, but in western countries, it is legally and has legal effect to use the personal electronic signature to represent the behavior of the individuals and their organizations. Therefore, the most popular service providers, such as DocuSign and Adobe Sign use electronic signatures to sign the contracts online.
Although most of the countries in the world are recognized the legal effect of the electronic signatures, but due to the electronic signature graphic cannot be verified, MeSign strongly recommend users to use digital signing methods to sign the e-contract since certificate-based digital signatures are the most advanced, compliant, and secure type of e-signature. When you need the highest level of assurance of each signer’s identity and document authenticity, opt for a trusted digital signature backed by digital identity certification.
MeSign Contract E-signature Pro Edition uses Adobe global trusted PDF signing certificate to sign the e-contract, ensuring all the signed e-contracts has globally legal effect and assurance of each signer’s authentic identity.
This is because currently almost all Contract E-signature service providers require their users to upload the original contracts to be signed to their signing platforms, which is quite possible to disclose the confidential information in the contract and bring security risks to users.
We believe that in order to protect the confidential information in the users’ contracts, the Contract E-signature service providers do not require users to upload original documents, which should be bottom line of all Contract E-signature services. As a global leading e-Signing services provider, MeSign should promote the Contract E-signature service industry to provide services to users according to this bottom line. Only in this way, we can guarantee the healthy and rapid development of Contract E-signature services. This is not only the demand from users, but also it is required by related laws and regulations. We firmly believe this bottom line of the eSigning services will definitely become the standard of Contract E-signature services.
‘Does not have users’ original contract’ is the bottom line of MeSign Contract E-signature services. The essence of digital signature is to use digital certificate to sign the HASH of the file, it doesn’t need the original documents. However, currently all Contract E-signature Service providers, such as DocuSign and Adobe Sign, or others, all require users to upload the original documents to the e-signing platform. It is because they make users to sign the contract on the web page, and the contract documents can generate the HASH of the document on the server of the signing platform directly which are truly very convenient for users and users really like this method. However, users haven’t recognized the confidential information on the contract has been submitted to the e-signature service provider, which is a big security risk for them. Maybe some users have recognized these issues, but they have no choice, because all vendors provide this kind of services.
MeSign believe that Contract E-signature service providers should not have users’ original contract documents, and this is an issue about contract document security which must be solved. Therefore, we provide a solution of splitting the signing process into two parts. The generated HASH data will be done in users’ computer, and the documents to be signed will not leave users’ computer or users’ internal management system. Users use MeSign APP to generate the HASH data and MeSign APP will only submit the HASH data to MeSign e-Signing Services system. When completing the HASH signing in the cloud, the returned signed data will be sent to the MeSign APP on users’ local computer. MeSign APP is responsible to complete the signing by writing the signed data into the PDF file. If large enterprises need to fully automate the entire e-contract signing process, then the local signing process will be done by MeSign e-Signature System.
MeSign Document D-signature service and Contract E-signature Service all use the technical solution of cloud HASH signing.
MeSign use digital signature technologies, of which the legal effect is dependent on using the identity validated signing certificate with signer’s identity to digitally sign the e-contracts or documents. Although the email signing certificates has been configured on MeSign APP automatically, but the email signing certificate is a soft certificate installed on the user’s device. However, the regulations of Adobe Approved Trusted List do not allow to use the soft certificate for digital signatures. In order to reduce the user's cost (purchasing a USB Token or HSM) and to facilitate the management of the certificate, the digital signature service provided by MeSign use the method of cloud HASH signing. The certificates used for digital signature are generated and encrypted hosted in the cloud HSM, and it will only be used on an as-needed basis when users completed the authentication and agreed to sign the contract and document.
It is worth to point out that MeSign Document D-signature Service only upload the HASH of the document to be signed to the cloud and does not submit the original documents to be signed to the cloud. After completing the HASH signing in the cloud, MeSign APP will write signed data into the PDF document at user’s local computer, which can effectively protect the personal privacy information and business secret.
If the Contract E-signature services you are using or you are planning to use require you to upload the original contract and documents to be signed to the e-signing platform, we recommend you use it cautiously.
MeSign Technology completely simplify and generalize the contract and Document D-signature that make it easy to use. The email-validated only electronic signature methods for global users is very easy to use. The identity-validated digital signature methods make the contract and Document D-signature more trustworthy and has the same legal effect to handwritten signatures or organizational seals. If users purchased the Contract E-signature Service, they can unlimitedly initiate contract signing and unlimitedly sign the contract, which completely solve the issue of the last step of the business activity – delivering paper-based contract. The Global Trusted Document D-signature service completely solve the trusted issues in enterprise’s paperless management, completely achieve trusted paperless and ensuring the documents won’t be tampered with or impersonated illegally.
There are many applications scenarios as following:
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