Advanced Electronic Signature (AES)
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This guide presents a technical overview of our Advanced Electronic Signature solution, available for integration through Workflow Studio. For an introduction to all of our electronic signature solutions and help choosing an assurance level, see the Electronic Signature overview.
To enable Advanced Electronic Signature on your account, you will need to contact your Customer Success Manager or Account Executive. Alternatively, contact Entrust's Customer Support.
Solution overview
Advanced Electronic Signature (AES) is a secure method of digital signing that ensures the integrity, authenticity and legal admissibility of electronic documents.
AES helps organisations meet numerous regulatory requirements while providing a secure and user-friendly signing experience. The combination of document verification, biometric checks, and a sealed, tamper-proof transaction receipt ensures a high level of trust and integrity in the signing process when compared to standard electronic signatures.
The solution is compliant with a variety of worldwide digital signature standards, including the EU's eIDAS regulation, Switzerland's ZertES and the UK's post-Brexit eIDAS regulation. These regulatory frameworks define AES based on criteria such as being uniquely linked to the signer, capable of identifying the signer and created using signature creation data under the signer's sole control.
To learn more about our AES solution, see our eIDAS AES for Customer Onboarding page.
Please note: This product guide on AES is provided for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. The content herein is not a substitute for professional legal counsel. It is intended to provide a high-level overview of how the product functions from a technical and operational perspective. Customers are encouraged to consult their own legal advisors to ensure that any use of electronic signing products complies with applicable laws and meets their specific requirements.
Advanced Electronic Signature request and verification tasks
For lower assurance or low-risk documents where advanced identity verification (document + biometric) is not required, you can instead use a Simple Electronic Signature (SES) workflow. SES offers a lighter-weight signing experience and can be combined with less rigorous identity verification steps (for example, only a live selfie capture).
To combine AES with document and biometric identity verification, two dedicated tasks should be added to a Studio workflow in the Workflow Builder — a Request eSignature task configured with a signature_assurance_level of advanced, and a Verify eSignature (Advanced) task.
When building an AES workflow in Studio, a document to be signed by an applicant during the verification flow must be supplied as custom input data when creating a workflow run. See Supplying documents to e-signature workflows for the available options.
To satisfy compliance regulations, it is essential that the identity of the signer be verified, meaning the workflow must also contain a Document Report and a Facial Similarity Report.
The Request eSignature task controls user interaction where the applicant reviews and digitally signs the document. Once a document is signed, the signatory details, the workflow run ID and the document ID are added to the transaction to serve as signature evidence.
The Verify eSignature (Advanced) task confirms the integrity and successful completion of an AES transaction, taking as inputs the transaction ID from the Request eSignature task and the results of the Document and Facial Similarity reports. It generates a sealed, tamper-proof transaction receipt recording the signed file's hash, the signature placed, the signatory details and timestamps of the signer's interactions with the file, and securely stores the signed documents for controlled download and retrieval.
An example of a combination document and biometric verification with AES workflow
Configuration and retrieval
The following are common to all electronic signature assurance levels and are documented in the Electronic Signature configuration guide:
- Request eSignature task configuration (
signature_assurance_level,country_of_operation,signature_tag). - Supplying documents to e-signature workflows (external URL or private upload).
- Placeable signatures using the
signature_taginput. - Interpreting verification results.
- Retrieving the signed documents and media.
Signed documents and the signature transaction receipt can be retrieved using our API.
