An automatic electronic contract document signing system in a secure environment

Abstract

Superimposing electronic signing data on a signed electronic contract usually involves a large number of complex manual steps. These manual steps are tedious and may cause security faults. In this paper, we present an automatic electronic contract document signing system in a secure environment. The system comprises a document and signature profile module, a signing text template module and a signing information superimposed module. The document and signature profile module parses the contract document and signature information. Based on this information, the signing text template module creates a signing text template with empty text fields. The signing information superimposed module carry out a novel electronic document signing method. This novel method consists of four processing steps: inserting signing text data into empty text fields, converting the text template into an image template, adding signing image data onto the image template, and superimposing the signing image template on the contract document to produce a signed electronic contract document. This automation system has found to improve substantially the efficiency, and at the same time eliminate the potential for human errors and security breaches in signing electronic contract documents. © 2005 IEEE.