Operation Manual

350
Electronic signatures
Last updated 4/7/2015
Manage trusted identities
A digital ID includes a certificate with a public key and a private key. Participants in signing and certificate security
workflows exchange the public part (the certificate) of their digital ID. Once you obtain someone’s certificate and add
it to your trusted identities list, you can encrypt documents for them. There may be instances when the certificate does
not already chain up to a trust anchor that you have specified. In such cases, you can set the certificate’s trust level so
that you can validate the owner’s signature. Understanding what a trusted identity is and how trust levels are set lets you
streamline workflows and troubleshoot problems. For example, you can add trusted identities in advance and
individually set the trust for each certificate. In enterprise settings, your trusted identities list may be preconfigured.
You may also be able to search a directory server for additional certificates.
Import and export a certificate
You can export your certificate and contact data for use in signature validation and certificate security workflows. Other
users can import that data to their trusted identity list. Contact data added in this manner helps expand the number of
users that can participate in secure document workflows. See the Digital Signature Guide (PDF) at
www.adobe.com/go/learn_acr_security_en for information on exporting certificates.
1 Open the Preferences dialog box (Edit > Preferences).
2 Under Categories, select Signatures.
3 For Identities & Trusted Certificates, click More.
4 Select Digital IDs on the left.
5 Do one of the following:
• To import an ID, click the Add ID button , and follow the onscreen instructions.
• To export a certificate, click the Export button , and follow the onscreen instructions to email or save the
certificate to a file.
Setting certificate trust
You build a list of trusted identities by getting digital ID certificates from signing participants and certificate security
workflows. You get this information from a server, file, or a signed document. For signing workflows, you can get this
information during the signature validation process. For certificate security workflows involving encryption, request
the information in advance. This enables you to encrypt the document with the document recipient’s public key. See
the Digital Signature Guide (PDF) at
www.adobe.com/go/learn_acr_security_en for more information on setting up
certificate trust.
Adobe Approved Trust List (AATL)
The Adobe Approved Trust List (AATL) allows users to create certificate-based signatures that are trusted whenever
the signed document is opened in Acrobat 9 or Reader 9 and later. Both Acrobat and Reader access an Adobe hosted
web page to download a list of trusted root digital certificates every 30 days. Any certificate-based signature created
with a credential that can trace a relationship back to a certificate on this list is trusted. The trusted root certificates have
been verified by Adobe and other authorities to meet specific technical requirements. They represent high assurance
identity and signing credentials. The certificates include government and citizen credentials from across the world. In
addition, they include credentials from global commercial certificate authorities and qualified certification service
providers (CSPs) in Europe.
For details about this feature and why it is important for validating a signature, see the AATL web page at
www.adobe.com/security/approved-trust-list.html.