A signature was, for most of its history, private to the small number of people who had reason to see it. It was on documents held by the parties, in correspondence kept by the recipient, on instruments that were not, by their nature, broadcast. Its appearance on the public record was rare and ordinarily significant.

This is no longer the case. A signature is now, routinely, present on documents that become public for reasons unrelated to the signature. A planning application carries it. A court filing reproduces it. A regulatory document includes it. A scanned old contract surfaces in an archive. A photograph of a signing event captures it.

The consequence is that the principal's signature is, in many cases, available to anyone who looks for it. Whether or not it is useful to misuse depends on the systems that rely on it; the fact that it is available is independent of whether such systems exist or not.

The signature is also, increasingly, the input to verification systems that compare it to a new mark presented as the principal's. The verification is rarely good enough to be relied on alone, but the comparison is now a routine step in a transaction. The principal's signature is, in effect, on file in more places than they would expect.

The work in this category is more often about understanding the exposure than reducing it, which is largely impossible for an established life. It is also about ensuring that any current systems the principal relies on for authentication do not rest on a mark that has already been published in the places they would not expect.