Ensure legal certainty with digital signatures

As digital communication becomes standard in private and business contexts, a legally reliable digital signature becomes essential.​

A digital signature allows people to sign documents electronically. It is inseparably linked to a specific document, can be viewed by others, and can only be created or changed by the signatory. The technical basis is a mathematical process that allows anyone to verify origin and document affiliation.

Rapid developments in communication technology and its broad adoption create many new possibilities. Today, people can pay bills, place orders, and submit forms to public authorities online. Even sensitive and business-critical documents that were previously handled on paper are now mostly exchanged electronically. This makes digital signatures increasingly important as the electronic equivalent of legally binding handwritten signatures.

The Signature Act defines core requirements​

Depending on security requirements, the German Signature Act distinguishes between simple, advanced, and qualified digital signatures. Unlike a scanned handwritten signature, which is relatively easy to copy, a digital signature links a document uniquely to its signer.

This relies on cryptography with a key pair: a private signing key and a public verification key. Since each public key belongs to exactly one corresponding private key, the signer can be verified through the certification provider's directory, provided the public key is linked via certificate to the signer identity.

Digital signatures give electronic documents legal effect comparable to handwritten signatures. Beyond saving resources, they also make unauthorized changes easier to detect, which helps protect integrity and legal reliability. With webPDF, PDF documents can be digitally signed to meet a wide range of statutory requirements.