Digital Email Signatures with Certificates & Email Signatures and Disclaimers

– Both Central & Automated, Company-wide

Organizations need two types of email signatures – Know the difference

Zertificon automates both kinds for security, compliance, and the highest external efficiency impact

Signed emails as protection against phishing

A Digital Email Signature adds a security layer to online communications by authenticating sender identities and content integrity. It applies the same cryptography protocols used for email encryption, S/MIME, or OpenPGP standards to create a unique digital fingerprint: an identifier linked exclusively to a person or entity – the owner of the digital ID used to sign the email. Electronic signature usage is widespread in many industries. Get to know how Z1 SecureMail Gateway functions as a signature gateway that can help companies fight against phishing.

On the other hand, Email Signature and Disclaimer is a greeting formula enclosing contact data in the footer area of your email. Email disclaimers include information about events or legal notices within the signature. Ideally, both are centrally controlled and automatically added to each outgoing message.

One email signature solution to cover the two!

Not only do we make Digital Email Signatures easy. Email Signature & Disclaimer Management is an included add-in at no extra charge for our Z1 SecureMail Gateway customers.

Digital Email Signatures with Certificates

Verifiable signatures safeguard brand trust and support your fight against phishing

With digital email signature verification, you can easily prove that a given sender is the true origin of the email. A validated signature establishes trust in terms of assurance against content tampering.

Digital Email Signatures fight off phishing when employees stay alert

Digital email signatures are an effective security measure to detect phishing emails. A digital signature is tamper-proof; however, the recipient remains a potential weak spot. The signature only ensures security when the domain name – the digital signature’s source – is verified. Recipients must always be vigilant and keep an eye on the sender’s address.

But why is vigilance necessary? The more targeted the phishing attack, the more rewarding the effort for cyber threat actors to obtain “legitimate” digital email signing certificates matching free domains that mimic the domain name of the communication partner they claim to be.

Human alertness is a must, and user training is crucial. Automatic signature checks cannot bare full responsibility for the recipient when detecting phishing emails. Our Z1 SecureMail Gateway delivers all necessary information to help your employees identify risks. For example, for incoming signed emails, the Z1 SecureMail Gateway displays the validity of the digital signature and the email address for which the certificate was issued. The name inside the certificate cannot be edited, unlike the sender’s address in the email program – the “From” part of an email that identifies the sender. If the two do not match, the recipient receives a warning.

Detect email tampering with digital signature

Protect content integrity – prevent email manipulation

By validating the digital signature of an email, you can unequivocally determine whether the email content, including attachments, has been altered in transit from sender to recipient. The email content itself becomes part of the email signature; should it be tampered with, validation would be impossible. You will know if anyone intercepted and modified the email to deceive you.

Signed emails as proof of sender identity

Properly validated email signatures make an indisputable proof of origin. Once you send a signed email, it is difficult to deny the communication’s source, date, and time as they are documented, auditable, and proofed against future manipulation.

Easy & Automated Digital Email Signatures with Zertificon

How does the Z1 SecureMail Gateway protect you by processing Digital Email Signatures?

Validation of signatures in incoming emails becomes automatic. The recipient receives a warning if an email shows signs of tampering. You easily and quickly identify fraudulent emails and significantly reduce the likelihood of falling victim to phishing attacks. Additionally, when you digitally sign emails, your communication partners can also examine signature information – whether or not they themselves apply digital email signatures or not. You protect business exchanges and brand trust by giving involved parties the means to verify sender authenticity and transmitted information integrity.

View of a validated email signature with Z1 SecureMail Gateway

A verified and validated digital signature in an incoming email with Zertificon’s Z1 SecureMail Gateway

Automate and centralize the execution and validation of incoming email signatures with Z1 SecureMail Gateway

The gateway automatically adds digital email signatures to outgoing emails. It also automatically validates signatures based on associated certificate information for incoming emails. You can control signature processing with central, easily configurable policies. For example, removing signatures from incoming emails is possible so that employees are not confused with technical details. You can set the gateway to reject emails with invalid signatures. And in this case, you can enable email delivery failure notifications for the sender, recipient, and administrator. The gateway reports the security status of incoming emails to your employees without them having to learn about the technology. That way, training is needless.

Advanced electronic signature for documents not emails

Advanced Electronic Signature using Qualified Certificates

An Advanced Electronic Signature (AdES) is a legally binding signature. Based on Qualified Signatures, it is as valid as signing a document by hand. For this reason, Qualified Signatures are only applied to documents such as business contracts, disclosures, legal notices, employment offers, invoices, purchase orders, and many more. In contrast, Digital Email Signatures are equivalent to an envelope seal.

Your one-stop-shop for all things Digital Email Signatures

To sign emails digitally, you must acquire email signing certificates – Personal ID certificates from dedicated public Trust Centers, also called Certificate Authorities (CA). We organize the whole procurement, integration, and key/certificate lifecycle management process, so you get all you need from a single source: never worry about certificate expiration dates or invoice handling with the trust center. Moreover, we have unique partnerships with many trust centers, allowing our customers to enjoy special certificate rates.

Gateway + S/MIME email certificates for digital signing and encryption at Zertificon in the one-stop-shop

Would you like to know more about how Digital Email Signatures support your business-specific use cases? Our sales team is happy to assist you with any questions.

With Z1 SecureMail Gateway, the same technology that equips you with a robust Digital Signature Gateway also provides you with centralized email encryption capabilities – for comprehensive security, compliance, and reinforced digital transformation.

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Email Signatures and Disclaimers Management

Standardized Company-wide

Save time and effort in creating uniform signatures with employees’ personal information, disclaimers, and even event notices for your teams in all outbound emails.

Maintain Corporate Identity Guidelines

Centrally incorporate your latest logos, colors, fonts, disclaimers, and other marketing assets into your emails. Corporate signatures implementation responsibility should not be in the hands of individual employees. Doing so is the same as giving them complete creative liberty to design personal letterheads. With a central approach, you can uniformly define and reflect a consistent brand representation for your organization’s interactions with the world.

Uniform Corporate Email Signatures

Uniform email signature in corporate design

Professional Email Signatures as a Marketing Tool

Promote Events and Campaigns

Take advantage of disclaimers to spread the word about forthcoming events, form campaigns to trade fair dates, and everything in between that serves the specific marketing goals of your business.

Keep your legal notices up-to-date

With a central control system, you ensure that your legal notices always comply with current requirements in all employee emails, which helps you avoid liability risks.

Insert legal disclaimers and disclaimers into emails automatically

Up-to-Date Legal Email Signature Disclaimer

Central and Automatic: Easy Email Signature and Disclaimer Application

An included add-in at no extra cost for our customers in the Z1 SecureMail Gateway basic package.

Central management of signatures and disclaimers relieves employees from the burden while eliminating forgetfulness and error. You maintain complete control over your external communications at all times:

Automatically add your employees’ contact details
Create Signatures & Disclaimers for the entire company or individual groups and employees
Define different language versions for signatures and disclaimers
Create central rules for when to add which signature type/format to emails
Upload your own HTML design, including links & images

Tell us about your requirements.

Consultations are free, and we can provide a quote based on your needs.