eIDAS Electronic Seals and Signatures for Enterprise + Organizations

The eIDAS (electronic Identification, Authentication and Trust Services) regulation further distinguishes between advanced and qualified signatures and seals.

An advanced electronic signature (AdES) or seal is based on a qualified certificate for electronic signatures, and has the following characteristics:

• It is uniquely linked to the signatory.
• It can identify the signatory.
• It is linked to data in the signature that can detect any changes made.

A qualified electronic signature (QES) or seal is an AdES that is created using a qualified electronic signature creation device (QSCD) and issued by a qualified trust service provider (QTSP) like Sectigo. The signature is based on a qualified certificate for electronic signatures or seals.

Sectigo eIDAS Qualified Certificates enable users to apply advanced and qualified electronic signatures to documents, including Adobe and Microsoft Office documents, providing trusted assurance of authenticity for electronically transmitted documents usable on any operating system.

An electronic signature is data in electronic form that is attached to or logically associated with other data in electronic form, and that is used by the signatory to sign, where the signatory is a natural person. Like its handwritten counterpart in the offline world, an electronic signature can be used, for instance, to electronically indicate that the signatory has written the document, agreed with the content of the document, or that the signatory was present as a witness.

Electronic seals can serve as evidence that an electronic document was issued by a legal person, ensuring the veracity of the document’s origin and integrity. Across the European Union and all EU member states, when an electronic transaction requires a qualified seal from a legal person, a qualified electronic signature from an authorized representative of the legal person is also accepted.