sealsthrough

Sealsthrough is a term used in discussions of digital document security to describe a process by which a cryptographic seal or digital signature remains verifiable as a data object passes through intermediate processing steps, storage formats, or workflow systems.

In practice, sealsthrough relies on a seal token that travels with the document, containing the seal's metadata, the signer's identity, a timestamp, and a validated integrity hash. When the document is transformed, a policy check determines whether the current system can preserve or reapply the seal, or if a new seal must be issued to attest to the transition. The approach emphasizes end-to-end verifiability across transformations rather than only at the initial signing moment.

Applications include legal document management, supply-chain provenance, archival preservation, and compliance regimes that require auditable provenance for digital assets. The concept is particularly relevant in environments where documents undergo format changes, metadata updates, or automated workflows while maintaining trust in their origin and integrity.

Relation to standards: sealsthrough is not a formal standard itself, but it intersects with digital signature standards and integrity verification mechanisms that aim to preserve end-to-end verifiability across transformations. The idea is to provide a coherent model for preserving trust as data moves through diverse systems.

Limitations and challenges include performance overhead, increased system complexity, potential loss of seal fidelity if metadata is not managed consistently, and interoperability hurdles across heterogeneous platforms. The term emerged in scholarly and industry discussions in the 2020s to describe a class of approaches rather than a single protocol, remaining largely a conceptual model with varying implementations.

Related topics include digital signatures, non-repudiation, data integrity, and provenance.