In a online environment where transactions between two or more parties take place, the protection of data is crucial for all parties involved. In some cases the actual signing process may be adequate and meet E-Signature requirements, but accessibility could cause problems.
Take the case of Karr vs. Dillard Store Services, where a employee brought a suit claiming race discrimination, and the employer attempted to force a signature of the customer on a required arbitration agreement, via the company’s in-house built technology. Although the actual agreement had the employees signature on it, the employee denied knowingly signing the contract. Later on it was learned that the employer had repeatedly insisted on the employee’s signature. The Electronic Signature process used by the employer was E-Sign compliant, but a case was made since the system was set up in a way where the employees supervisor had access to the employee’s account and could actually log in and sign as the employee. Moreover, the plaintiff claimed that her supervisor signed the arbitration agreement, without the consent of the employee, during a “demonstration” of how the technology works. What the court was deciding on, in essence, was a electronic signature created by someone logged in to the plaintiff’s account. The court declined to attribute the purported electronic signature to the plaintiff and thus the arbitration agreement was unenforceable, reasoned by inadequate procedures to maintain passwords and restrict access to unauthorized parties.
Restricting access to unauthorized user and having a strong security level is becoming increasingly important and in this case we can see that access to users within the system must also be restricted to some extent. With Sertifi you can be assured that all accounts are only accessible only by authorized members since users can only retrieve their own passwords and “Super Administrative” access is limited to files signed and sent by users, not the actual signature. We are constantly increasing our security standards making sure our customers are in the safest environment possible when signing.