The Covid-19 pandemic has indirectly changed the lifestyle of the majority of Indonesian people.

Activities that smell offline must be shifted to become entirely online, from shopping for food to studying.

This online phenomenon also targets the activities of office employees, one of which is the use of digital signatures.

This digital signature was hype during the Covid 19 pandemic due to the limited mobilization of office employees.

Some of you may already know what a digital signature is because you have used it before

But here, for those who need to learn, the admin will explain in more detail what a digital signature is. Let’s read here!

What are Digital Signatures?

A digital signature, or what we usually call a digital signature, uses a technique and a mathematical algorithm so that the signatory can digitally sign the document.

Also, with digital signatures, we can validate the originality of an electronic document.

With digital signatures, we can minimize the falsification of documents and forgery of signatures.

What’s the difference between an electronic signature and a digital signature?

There are many differences between electronic signatures and digital signatures. Want to know what the differences are? Here below is the full review:

1. Signature Usability

The first difference between electronic and digital signatures is their use.

Because electronic signatures are used to prove the authenticity of the identity of the sender of the signature of a document or message.

2. Security

The next difference between electronic and digital signatures is seen in their security.

You need to know that electronic signatures consist of several security components ranging from data authentication and signing methods to user authentication, and electronic signatures do not use encryption.

While digital signatures use encryption techniques to maintain confidentiality and ensure the authenticity the identity of the sender of the message or the sender of the document that was previously signed.

How to Make a Digital Signature?

How to make a digital signature depends on each application that provides digital signature services.

Like the ilovepdf digital signature generator, smallpdf is where users can use digital signatures by following the instructions.

It is using an electronic signature application officially certified by the Indonesian government or doing digital signatures in well-known applications such as Ms. Word and PDF.

In this section, the admin will provide a PDF digital signature guide using Adobe Acrobat Reader:

• You can open a PDF document if you want to add a signature.
• You can click the Fill & Sign tab and add a signature
• This signature in Adobe can be used as a signature by typing your name. There is also a way to draw your signature using a mouse, trackpad, or stylus or by adding an image to your signature.
• You can tidy up your signature by arranging and measuring its position.
• You can save the document by clicking save on the File tab.

Digital Signature Forming Components

Looking at the digital signature function that helps and makes our work more accessible, it’s a good idea to know the components that make up a digital signature, namely:

• Hash is an algorithm that guarantees document originality and is in the form of a unique sequence of letters and numbers.
• An electronic certificate that guarantees the originality of the identity of the signatory parties and a certificate of authority, an electronic certificate that contains the parties’ keys.
• Cryptography System — a digital signature security system that uses a pair of public keys to encrypt data. And the other Key is the Private Key, which opens the encryption.
• Public Key Infrastructure — the entire Infrastructure, namely policies, and rules that support the distribution of public keys to relevant parties.

Digital Signature Legality

In Indonesia, the Ministry of Communication and Information is the party that regulates digital signature regulations.

A digital signature company that has been registered is called a Certified Electronic Signature, which already has an electronic certificate issued by the Indonesian Electronic Certification Operators (PSrE).

Electronic signatures are regulated based on Article 1 number 12 of Law No. 19 of 2016 concerning Amendments to Law Number 11 of 2008 concerning Electronic Information and Transactions and Article 1 paragraph 22 PP No. 71 of 2019 concerning PP PSTE, which explains that electronic signatures are carried out on electronic transactions and for a certified signature must have a PSre certificate and legally valid.

Apart from that, electronic signatures are also regulated in, Article 11 paragraph (1) of Law No. 11 of 2008 ITE Law and Article 59 paragraph (3) PP PSTE , which explains it’s a matter of legal strength and validity of digital signatures.

How Do Digital Signatures Work?

The way a digital signature works is quite complex, but you can read it in the following simple steps:

Below are several steps for how Digital Signature works, including:

1. Create a Digital Document You Want to Sign

First, someone creates a digital document they want to sign using an application or software that supports digital signatures.

2. Create Digital Signature With Private Key

It works after someone creates a digital signature using a private key stored on their electronic device.
This private Key can only be accessed by its owner and not by others.

3. Private Key Stored On Documents

After the digital signature is created, the public Key associated with the private Key is stored in the digital document along with the digital signature.

This public Key can be accessed by anyone and is used to verify the digital signature.

4. Documents Ready to be Sent to the Addressed Party

After the digital signature private key is stored in the digital document and the digital signature has been created, the document will be sent to the intended party.

5. Recipients of digital documents then verify

The final way of working is after the recipient of the digital document verifies using the public Key stored in the document.

If the public Key can be paired with a digital signature, the digital document will be considered valid and come from the party it should be.

What are the advantages of digital signatures?

Seeing its function, which helps our mobility, digital signatures have other advantages compared to wet signatures.

Here are the advantages of digital signatures:

• It’s hard to counterfeit and easy to track because it’s digitally recorded
• Environmentally friendly because it can reduce paper use
• Fast, so it can save time, be more energy-efficient, and be cost-effective.
• It turns out that the advantages of digital signatures are that they can be accepted globally and legally
• Safer
• There is a time stamp to track the time the signature was made.

Digital Signature Use in Indonesia

In addition to using digital signatures to sign documents, the use of digital documents has already been implemented, for example:

1. Credit card transactions

When you buy goods at a shopping center and want to pay using a credit card, you will be asked to sign on the screen of the EDC machine.

2. Process an Investment Application

Fintech companies usually use digital signatures to register prospective member accounts or confirm buying and selling investments on a platform.

Conclusion

So, that explains what a digital signature is and how it works.

Many digital signatures that are developing in society may still need to use blockchain technology, but digital signatures are very up-to-date.

The above article can be useful.