In today’s digital age, most businesses are on board with going paperless. Whether transforming lab documents, engineering diagrams, contracts, or loan applications – the general consensus is paper is cumbersome, difficult to manage and expensive. That’s why accurately digitizing content is so important. Worldwide, our digital footprint is big – and only getting bigger. To ease the electronic transition, seamless and effective document processing is now a critical requirement for most businesses. And digital signatures hold the key.
Analysts estimate there will be more than 40 trillion gigabytes of data in existence before end of this decade. It makes sense. Electronic documents are a requirement for business – driving more dynamic, collaborative and seamless workflows. Not only do they save time and money, but also allow organizations to work faster and smarter than ever before. But the volume of content generated daily can be overwhelming. The general term is “content shock” - meaning the amount of information is quickly outpacing the market’s ability to consume it. Going one step further, many predictions indicate the rate of digital content growth is actually doubling every two years. This creates a problem not only for data consumers, but also for those businesses attempting to quickly and easily process documents – whether it’s contracts, loan applications, or engineering plans. At the center of this issue are digital signatures.
The theory behind digital signatures is generally understood, even if many can’t recite a formal definition. These electronic signatures effectively encrypt documents with unique digital codes that are hard to replicate, duplicate or compromise. A strong digital signature ensures message contents aren’t altered during transmission. The process secures virtually any form of online content – from e-mails to online orders. The process involves a complex mathematical process integrating unique numerical values represented via character sequencing. Only a computer is uniquely qualified to generate this type of combination. But the route to adoption Digital signatures isn’t always easy. After all, there are a range of solutions available – creating confusion in the market.