How to Confirm a Signer Is Real

How to Confirm Your Signer Is Legitimate Before eSigning

1. Establish a Signer Authentication Policy

Not every document carries the same risk. A routine internal approval and a high-value loan agreement require very different levels of signer verification. Start by classifying your documents into risk tiers.

For low-risk documents, email verification and access codes may be sufficient. For high-risk agreements such as real estate closings, financial contracts, or healthcare consents, you need multi-layered identity confirmation that includes government ID checks, biometrics, and KBA.

Map each tier to specific verification methods and document the policy. This creates a repeatable standard your compliance and operations teams can follow across every signing event.

2. Verify the Signer’s Government-Issued ID

Many eSigning platforms allow signers to upload a photo of a government-issued ID. On its own, uploading an ID is not enough to confirm identity. Fraudsters can use high-resolution images or digitally altered documents to bypass basic upload checks.

Advanced platforms go further by cross-referencing submitted documents against global databases. Secured Signing verifies 16,000+ government-issued identity documents from countries worldwide, checking for data consistency, document tampering, and validity in real time.

Automated document verification reduces the risk of accepting a fabricated credential while speeding up the process for legitimate signers.

3. Apply Knowledge-Based Authentication (KBA)

Knowledge-Based Authentication asks the signer a set of personal questions drawn from public and private records. These questions cover topics only the legitimate identity holder should know, such as past addresses, loan amounts, or vehicle registration details.

KBA works as an additional checkpoint after ID verification. If someone has stolen a physical ID or created a synthetic one, they are unlikely to know the answers to these dynamic, time-limited questions.

Secured Signing offers built-in KBA authentication that integrates directly into the signing workflow. Your signers answer verification questions inside the same session, with no need to switch between applications.

4. Run Biometric Facial Matching

Biometric facial matching compares a live image of the signer’s face to the photo on their submitted government ID. It confirms that the person holding the document is the same person pictured on it.

Static selfie checks, however, can be fooled by printed photos or screen displays. This is exactly where Secured Signing excels with 3D biometric liveness detection. During the verification process, the signer performs actions such as:

• 3D Depth Perception analysis
• Light Refraction checks
• Facial Landmarks and Mapping

This confirms the signer is a real person and not a static image, mask, or video replay.

5. Screen for Deepfake Manipulation

AI-generated impersonation has become one of the fastest-growing identity threats. According to AU10TIX’s Q1 2026 Global Identity Fraud Benchmark Report, AI-generated identity fraud has now surpassed physical document counterfeiting for the first time, with AI-generated selfie attacks surging 54.5% quarter over quarter.

Fraudsters can create realistic video and audio impersonations to trick verification systems and personnel. Standard biometric checks don’t have the capability to detect this level of manipulation.

Secured Signing solves this problem with Realify Deepfake Detection. Realify analyzes video sessions in real time, identifying pixel inconsistencies, synthetic media artifacts, and audio manipulation patterns. This helps ensure the person appearing in a signing session is genuinely present and authentic.

6. Lock the Signature with PKI and Generate an Audit Trail

After confirming the signer’s identity, bind their verified identity to the signed document in a way that cannot be altered afterward. This is the gold standard: Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) digital signatures.

PKI digital signatures lock the signature cryptographically to the document. If even a single character is changed after signing, the signature becomes invalid. This is what separates a tamper-proof digital signature from a basic electronic signature.

Secured Signing then generates a complete audit trail that records every verification step: ID checks, KBA results, biometric matching outcomes, deepfake screening results, timestamps, IP addresses, and device information. This documentation is critical for legal defensibility and regulatory compliance.