Seeking a Practical Guide to Digital Signatures?

ScuzzMonkey asks: "I work for a small company trying to streamline some business processes in Washington State. As a part of this initiative, we're considering implementing a 'paperless' contracts system. In order for this to work out, on our end, we need a legally acceptable method of electronically signing the contract documents that we receive via fax from our sub-contractors (at this time, they will still be signing manually; this may eventually move to e-mail and digital signatures on their end as well as they become more capable of dealing with us on that level). On the face of it, this seems pretty straightforward. I set up some sort of certificate or some such for our employees responsible for signing these documents, and they simply review the TIFF attachment that comes in from the fax software and 'sign' it with their digital signature via a selected program. With the passage of the E-Sign Act (PDF) in 2000, it seems like this should be every bit as solid in court as a written signature. But while I've been able to find quite a lot of information on the web about the theoretical ramifications of this law, there's not much on practical implementations. What sort of software should I use? Do I need a third-party issued certificate? If so, do I just need one for the company, or one for each signer? What certificate authorities would you recommend? Do some certificates work with some software but not other software? What about this program from the state? Has anyone done this successfully yet? Any other stumbling blocks I should be aware of here, either legal or technological?"

Comments

First question:

[ObviousGuy]

Are your customers willing to do this? While I'm sure there's a contingent out there that is willing to dive in and get rid of all the face to face visits and FedEx packages, I'm not so sure that they number past a few. Most companies that I have the pleasure of dealing with would much rather seal decisions with a pen than email.

A Google search on this topic pops up quite a bit of broken links. :-(