Electronic Signature vs Digital Signature

Marketing language blurred these terms for years, and PDF readers made it worse by labeling certificate-based signing simply as "digital signature" in their interfaces. The result is that people often use "digital signature" when they mean any signature applied on a computer.

The distinction still matters in two situations: when a regulation or counterparty specifically requires certificate-based signing, and when you are evaluating what evidence a product actually produces.

A digital signature uses a key pair. The signer's private key produces a cryptographic value over a hash of the document, and anyone holding the corresponding public key can verify that value. Because the computation covers the document's contents, any later modification causes verification to fail.

The identity half of the system comes from a certificate issued by a certificate authority, which vouches that the key pair belongs to a named person or organization. The strength of a digital signature therefore depends as much on the rigor of that issuing process as on the mathematics.

Bond4Docs produces electronic signatures in the ESIGN and UETA sense, backed by hash-based tamper evidence rather than per-signer PKI certificates. When a workflow completes, Bond4Docs records SHA-256 hashes covering the document and the captured signing information, together with timestamped event history, and issues a completion certificate with a public identifier that can be checked later.

That model fits the agreements most small teams handle: contracts, statements of work, leases, onboarding paperwork, waivers, and approvals. It does not attempt to replace a qualified electronic signature under eIDAS, and it does not perform notarization or government identity verification. If your transaction specifically requires a certificate-based qualified signature, you need a provider offering that tier.