Towards a Modular Architecture for Adaptable Signature-Verification Tools

The verification of electronic signatures represents a key component of security-sensitive applications. Signature-verification tools need to meet several requirements regarding security, reliability, usability, and accessibility. A conducted survey revealed that existing signature-verification tools often meet only a subset of these requirements. In most cases, available tools support a limited set of document and signature formats only, or do not feature appropriate interfaces that allow both end users and third-party applications to access
the tool’s functionality in a convenient way. This complicates the development of electronic signature based third-party applications and reduces the usability for end users. To solve this problem, we propose a new architecture for Web based signature-verification tools. The proposed architecture follows a plug-in based approach that eases the integration of new signature formats and interfaces. The practical applicability of the proposed
architecture is demonstrated by means of a concrete implementation covering different use cases. This implementation demonstrates that the proposed architecture facilitates the realization of signature-verification tools that are able to meet all requirements of end users and third-party applications. This way, the proposed architecture and the implemented solution contribute to the security, usability, and efficiency of present and future electronic signature based applications.