Contract Security

What is the Digital Fingerprint?

The Digital Fingerprint for our Signature is one of the most exciting features in the audit trail! Similar to a human fingerprint, each signer of a WordPress eSignature generated document will have a unique Digital Fingerprint. The fingerprint is comprised of a series of events and data that is associated with the signer party’s digital signature that was used to eSign their document.

Once a document has been signed a barcode gets generated in the WordPress Audit Trail. The Digital Fingerprint bar code contains the unique checksum ID (which is a text and numeric string combination) that makes up the signers unique signature fingerprint.

It is important to note that the digital fingerprint (for security reasons) is NOT stored in the database of your WordPress website. The fingerprint is generated each time a document is loaded. This helps protect you the document creator, as well as your signer’s from any malicious intent to manipulate the terms of an electronically signed contract.

Digital Fingerprint Barcode Explained

If you have access to a smartphone or tablet, you can search your app store for any number of free bar code readers. With a bar code reader app installed you will be able to scan the digital finger print ID. Scanning the barcode should return the text and numeric value of the digital fingerprint (on your smartphone or tablet device) as it is printed in the audit trail.

digital fingerprint id app

digital fingerprint scan

If the multi-factor digital checksum fingerprint that is listed in your document doesn’t match the text and numeric string that is returned when scanning the barcode, then you might have reason to suspect the authenticity of the document. WP E-Signature scanned barcode results should match the same fingerprint checksum that is generated on your document.

 

Audit Trail: Signer Party ID

The WordPress Audit trail that is generated with our ESignature plugin documents includes a section called Signer Party ID.

The Signer Party ID is a unique numeric identifier that is associated with a signer of a particular document. Think of this as the ‘social security number’ of a particular signer, or the number that WP E-Signature uses to identify the them.

 

Audit Trail: Audit Signature ID #

The Audit Signature ID # is another advanced tamper resistant feature included in the WordPress eSignature Audit Trail, which protects you and your signers. The audit trail and event log is comprised of timezone relevant timestamps, signer activity & event logs, user ip address, legal name and the users email address.

Once a document is marked as closed (all signatory parties have added their electronic signatures to the contract), the audit signature id # will get generated in the footer of the document.

This particular serial number is comprised of the document events and audit trail data related to this particular document.

Once the document is closed all parties will receive an email with the audit signature id # in the email body.

If ANY of the event data is EVER manipulated in the database, the audit trail serial number will instantly be updated. If the audit trail serial number does not match the serial number in the emails that were sent out and in the footer of the originally completed document, you can have reason to suspect document tampering.

Unique Document ID Explained
Each document, contract, or agreement that is created using the signature plugin receives a unique document Identifier (or ID). Similar to human DNA, each WP E-Signature-generated document has its own unique DNA string. The document identifier is the text and numeric string that identifies the unique (one of a kind) document DNA.

Tamper Resistance Document ID
If the document is ever tampered with or altered in any way (this means unencrypting the database and changing something as small as a period to a comma within a WP E-Signature agreement), the Document ID will change immediately. Altering any aspect of a live agreement will literally cause the agreement to “self-destruct” until all original contents are exactly as they were at the time of signing.

This added security protects you and your signers and ensures that the terms of a document at the time of signing remain the same for the life cycle of the agreement period.

This tamper resistance feature is made possible with the document DNA and Document ID string.

It is also important to note that the Document ID is never stored in your database but rather generated on demand each time a document loads so that it cannot be altered and used for future agreements.

 

Scroll to Top