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Digital Signature Requirements

Forum Index > Security > Digital Signature Requirements
2010-02-24 07:33:42
Pierre897
Registered: Feb 24 2010
Posts: 2

Hi,

The organization I work for would be interested into knowing more about digital signatures for PDF files.

Does anyone know the necessary requirements (software, version, add-ons...)? I found out a document from Adobe mentioning various things such as USB Tokens and I am a bit lost.

In addition I would like to know if the full process explaining how it works exists somewhere.

Thank you,
Pierre.

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2010-03-02 16:40:31
#1
smadwin
Expert
Registered: Jul 10 2009
Posts: 40
Hi Pierre,

That is a lot of information online that you can peruse. Start at http://www.adobe.com/security/digsig.php and go from there. I'd recommend looking at the "Security Technical White Paper".

Steve

Steven Madwin
Software QA Engineer
Adobe Systems Incorporated
345 Park Avenue, MS-W15
San Jose, CA 95110-2704 USA
408.536.4343 p, 408.537.4053 f
Steven [dot] Madwin [at] adobe [dot] com

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2010-03-03 00:12:58
#2
UVSAR
Expert
Registered: Oct 29 2008
Posts: 1357
If you're looking for public-root certificates (so you can sign or certify a document and anyone opening it can verify the signature is genuine) then you need to buy them from one of Adobe's vendor partners. They're not the same thing as the SSL certificate to make an https website, nor the cheap "personal ID" tokens used for signing emails, so expect to pay several hundred dollars per year per user. Adobe PKI certificates are usually issued to an individual person (one or two vendors sell versions for corporate shared use, but they cost more) and many of the vendors will send the private key file on a specially-encrypted USB flash drive so the user can carry it about but never has to install it - that way they aren't risking leaving it behind on someone else's computer.

Here are some links:

http://www.globalsign.com/document-security-compliance/adobe-cds/

http://www.verisign.com/authentication/pki-infrastructure-solutions/certified-electronic-document-signing

http://www.geotrust.com/signing-products/document-signing/individual/

(there are others, and I'm not suggesting the above are any better or worse)
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