An electronic signature is, like its paper equivalent, a legal concept. Its purpose is to capture a person’s intent to be legally bound to an agreement or contract. A digital signature, on the other hand, refers to encryption/decryption technology and is a subset of an electronic signature.

Based on public-key cryptography, digital signatures secure signed documents and make it possible to verify the authenticity of a signed record. A digital signature alone however is not an e-signature and therefore cannot capture a person’s intent to sign a document. When used with an e-signing application, digital signature technology secures the e-signed data.