Digital Signature

Representing a written signature found on paper, a digital signature is actually a digitalized code that can be included with a digital message to identify a sender. A digital signature must somehow guarantee that the person sending the digital message is really who he or she claims to be. Used in many electronic business transactions today, digital signatures must be not forgeable. Therefore, a number of encryption techniques are utilized to guarantee a high level of security with digital signatures. In the year 2000, a law was passed in the United States making it legitimate for legal documents to be signed using digital signatures.

See Also: Encryption or Encipher.