What is a tamper-evident audit trail (and why it matters)?
A tamper-evident audit trail is a detailed, time-stamped record of everything that happened to a document from the moment it was sent to the moment it was completed. It sits behind every document you send with Signet, and if a signature is ever questioned, it is the audit trail that answers.
Most people think the signature is the proof. It is part of it. But on its own, a name typed or drawn on a page tells you very little. The audit trail is what turns a signature into evidence.
What an audit trail actually records
A good audit trail captures the full lifecycle of the document, not just the final signature. With Signet, that includes:
- Sent — when the document was created and issued, and to whom.
- Opened and viewed — when each recipient first opened the link and looked at the pages.
- Signed — the exact moment each party applied their signature, in order.
- Sealed — when the completed document was finalised and locked.
Each of these events is stamped with the time it happened and the context around it. That context is what matters. A signature with no record of when it was opened, read and applied is a claim. A signature wrapped in a sequence of time-stamped events is a story that stands up to scrutiny.
What "tamper-evident" means
Tamper-evident does not mean the file can never be altered. Anyone can, in theory, edit a PDF. What it means is that any alteration after completion becomes detectable.
When a document is sealed, its contents are cryptographically bound to the record. If a single character in the finished document is changed afterwards, the seal no longer matches. The tampering announces itself. You are not asking people to trust that nothing changed — you are giving them a way to check.
The point of a tamper-evident record is not to make a document impossible to alter. It is to make any alteration impossible to hide.
Why it is the real proof in a dispute
Imagine a contractor claims they never agreed to a revised scope, or a client says they never saw the terms. A signature alone invites a shrug and a denial. An audit trail changes the conversation.
It shows the document was delivered, opened, read for a period of time, and signed — with each step time-stamped and attributable. That is far harder to wave away than a name on a page. In practice, the audit trail is the difference between "I think we had a deal" and "here is exactly what happened, and when."
This is also why the audit trail matters more than the visual signature itself. Handwriting can be copied. A signature image can be pasted. But reconstructing a consistent, sealed sequence of events after the fact is another matter entirely.
How anyone can verify it
A record is only as useful as your ability to check it. That is why every completed Signet document can be independently verified — not just by you, but by the other party, their solicitor, an auditor, or anyone you share it with.
Verification confirms two things: that the document is the genuine completed version, and that it has not been altered since it was sealed. You do not need a Signet account to do it, and it works on every plan including Free. You can see how this works on our verification page, and read more about how documents are protected on our security page.
The result is quiet confidence. You send a document, it gets signed, and behind it sits a record you can stand on if you ever need to. Most of the time you never will. But the value of proof is that it is there before you need it, not scrambled together afterwards.
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