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Best Practices

5 Ways to Protect Your Business Documents from Tampering

Prevent fraud before it happens by securing your outgoing invoices and contracts.

While tools like DocGard AI are excellent for catching incoming fraud, you also need to ensure that the documents your business sends out cannot be easily altered by malicious actors.

  1. Use Digital Signatures (Cryptographic Certificates): Don't just paste an image of your signature. Use Adobe Acrobat or DocuSign to apply a cryptographic lock that breaks if the document is altered.
  2. Flatten Your PDFs: Never send editable PDFs. "Flatten" the file so that text boxes become permanent images merged with the background.
  3. Avoid Standard Word Documents: Never issue invoices or contracts as .docx files, which are designed to be easily edited by anyone.
  4. Implement Strict Access Controls: Keep your official letterheads and templates in restricted folders so rogue employees cannot generate fake documents internally.
  5. Audit with ELA: If a client returns a signed contract and something seems off, run it through an Error Level Analysis scan to ensure terms or prices weren't subtly changed before signing.