Digital signatures are electronic stamps that use public and private keys to verify the authenticity of electronic documents, ensuring they come from the sender. They are different from digital certificates and email signatures and can be used for email messages.
Digital signatures are electronic stamps that can be used to identify the sender or signer of a digital document. Think of digital signatures as the digital equivalent of signing a contract or check. Digital signatures use pairs of public and private keys to ensure the authenticity of an electronic document. The creator of the document will have the private part of a digital signature scheme which is encoded on the document when it is signed. Then the recipient of the document will receive the public key of the digital signature scheme. This would let the recipient of the document know that the document was authentic and really came from the sender.
Continuing the analogy with a paper document, the purpose of a signature is to verify that the signer is the author of the document. Sometimes documents require signatures in person to have a witness signing. The public key/private key pair enables verification of electronic documents in much the same way.
A digital signature scheme generates a key pair and the public key will only match the matching private key and vice versa. This ensures that the document containing the private key is authentic and has not been modified since it was signed.
One thing to note is that a digital signature is completely different from a digital certificate, which verifies a website’s content with a third party. A digital signature is also very different from an email signature. While an email signature is a digital representation of the sender’s name and contact information, it does not guarantee the origin of the message or document.
E-mail messages can be signed with digital signatures to verify their origin just like other electronic documents. Using digital signatures will allow the recipients of these documents to feel comfortable trusting that the document really comes from the indicated sender. This process can also help ensure that the document hasn’t been changed since it was sent.
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