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.

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.

Introduction

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 sealed evidence files 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 capture and report tasks

To combine AES with document and biometric identity verification, two dedicated AES tasks should be added to a Studio workflow in the Workflow Builder - an Advanced Electronic Signature capture task and an Advanced Electronic Signature report task.

When building an AES workflow in Studio, a URL that links to the document to be signed by an applicant during the verification flow must be configured as custom input data, passed in when creating a workflow run. 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 Advanced Electronic Signature capture 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 Advanced Electronic Signature report task confirms the integrity and successful completion of an AES transaction. As task inputs, it takes the transaction ID of the Advanced Electronic Signature capture task, the signed PDF file, and data from the Document report and the biometric report tasks. The report task creates a sealed tamper-proof transaction receipt, that refers to the hash of the signed file, the signature placed, the signatory details, the document ID, the workflow run ID and applicant ID, and timestamps of all interactions of the signer with the file. The report task securely stores the signed documents to ensure their integrity and confidentiality, enabling controlled access for file download and retrieval.

An example of a combination document and biometric verification with AES workflow

Retrieving the signed documents and media

Once the workflow has completed, the signed document, a signature transaction receipt and an evidence file containing additional information gathered during the workflow run can be retrieved using our API.

To obtain the relevant document IDs from the AES report task, you'll first need to retrieve a list of all completed workflow tasks using the List Tasks endpoint. Subsequently, make a Retrieve Task call to the API using the task ID of the AES report task, with the document IDs being returned in the output attribute of the response.

For each of the documents you wish to retrieve, make a Retrieve Advanced Electronic Signature Document call to the API using the relevant document IDs. The API returns the binary data representing the signed PDF document.