I wanted to check with everyone on Notary Cafe, to see if anyone has any suggestions with regards to California state law, statute, polices Etc… On how a signing should be conducted via IPEN. I’ve contacted the state and could not get much clarity form the gentleman on the other end of phone. Also does anyone have any suggestions regarding how to store this E-Seal securely ? and last, any suggestions on Title companies now utilizing IPEN.
I can only comment on the electronic seal. The seal is just a picture, no different than a picture of your favorite flower. In CA you can’t create it yourself, an authorized seal vendor has to make it after you send them an authorization form from the state.
The big difference from an ink seal is that when you make an impression with an ink seal, it’s never perfect. No one could make an exact copy of your seal from a document you had notarized, and even trying to come close would involve quite a bit of special equipment. But anyone with solid computer skills could extract a perfect copy of your seal from a notarized document, and apply it to other documents you have never seen. So an electronic seal is never going to be as secure as an ink seal.
The security in a digital document comes from the public-key-infrastructure (PKI) electronic signature, which uses math to combine your secret key with the contents of the document to create a number, which can be used to verify the document, but is of no use in trying to forge a document.
Although the electronic seal will never be all that secure, you can protect it the same ways you might protect any other sensitive file. You could keep it encrypted, and only make a decrypted copy when you need to use it, and then delete the decrypted file. Or you could put it on a thumb drive and keep the thumb drive locked up.
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