CAdES (ETSI EN 319 122) is the standard for advanced electronic signatures built on Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS/PKCS#7). It signs arbitrary binary content and can be detached (a separate .p7s file) or enveloping, which makes it common for machine-to-machine and archival use.
CAdES vs PAdES
PAdES is CAdES adapted to live inside a PDF. Use CAdES when you need to sign data that is not a PDF — log files, EDI messages, binary payloads — or when the signature must be stored separately from the content.
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