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Larry Talley - NOAA Federal (Unlicensed)

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A traditional holographic (hand-written) signature affixes a distinctive mark to the original document (the signature) that may be used as evidence of the identity of the signing party, their approval, authorization, or adoption of the document, and that the document has not been altered subsequent to the signature. An electronic signature calls for a similar outcome. 

Excerpt

Some distinctive mark must be affixed to the original document as evidence of the electronic signature, binding the document to the signing party's identity, indicating their approval or adoption, and providing evidence of the document's integrity.

(These three elements, identity, adoption, and non-alteration, are known in computer security jargon as non-repudiation.)

Binding Document to Identity

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Alternative

Document Binding, Integrity, and Audit Trails Mechanisms

Confidence

Characteristics

Typical online system practices

write the individual's identifier, the signed document, and contextual information into the database as a relation, with typical constraints, access controls, and security procedures
audit trails (change logs) may be maintained in the application program or the database layer

low

fast implementation,
inexpensive to implement and maintain,
security characteristics well understood

Secure online system practices

rigorous constraints, access controls, and security procedures, including audit trails in the database layer (in addition to any controls in the application layer), trusted time sources, logging of security events in the database layer and/or the system software layer, etc.
audit trails (change logs) should be maintained in both the application program and database layers

moderate

moderately expensive to implement and maintain,
security characteristics well understood

Package with a Digital Signature

pre-process the document using a mathematical function that would imprint the identifier and contextual data on the document, and then store the resulting imprinted document along with the identifier and contextual data, which should include a trusted timestamp.
it should be impossible to change a signed document, since the Digital Signature's tamper-evident packaging would indicate that a changed document was invalid; instead of allowing changes to signed documents, the system may support attaching signed amendments or annotations to a document, or some other mechanism that clearly preserves the original signed document but makes some allowance for adding to the record in the future.

high

expensive to implement and maintain, security characteristics are complex and unfamiliar

USPS Electronic Postmark

submit the document, identifier and contextual data to the US Postal Service Electronic Postmark system (EPS) and store the resulting confirmation code with the signed document
in this instance the most relevant audit trails would be those that guanrantee that the relationship between the document, identifier and contextual data and the USPS EPS confirmation code was robust.  The existence of effective audit trails within the USPS EPS program would be assumed.

highest

inexpensive to implement but expensive to maintain, security characteristics are based on trust in the institution of the USPS

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