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LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW
Document information and security
Last updated 1/15/2015
Digital Signatures
Digital Signatures lets you use digital signatures to preserve and verify the integrity and authenticity of a document in
these situations:
• When it is transferred among users within and beyond the firewall
• When it is downloaded offline
• When it is submitted back to your organization.
With Digital Signatures, you can automate the process of certifying and signing documents. You can also automate the
process of validating signatures in documents that are submitted back to your organization.
Key features
Digital Signatures can apply security features to any PDF document whether it is generated by other Adobe server
products, on a desktop by Acrobat, or even a third-party solution. Because PDF documents can contain any type of
information, such as text, audio, and video files, you can use Digital Signatures to secure any type of information saved
in a PDF document.
Digital Signatures can apply the following security features through automated business processes or
programmatically through the API:
Certification and Approval signatures: Specify digital signing of documents so that recipients can validate the
authenticity and integrity of the content. Digital signatures can be applied individually or in batches by using digital
certificates from third-party vendors. With digital signatures applied, documents maintain authenticity even when
archived.
Signature validation: Specify signature validation so that your organization can verify the authenticity of documents
it receives.The Signature service verifies signatures on a PDF document and returns information about the overall
validity of a PDF document. The validity of a PDF document includes the signed content, and the identity and trust
settings of the signer. Document validity determines whether Modification Detection and Prevention (MDP) and
Modification Detection and Protection Plus (MDP+) rules are adhered to.
Dynamic control: Design forms in such a way that you can control the signature properties dynamically on the client
for fields that were already rendered. You can also add new fields and additional control.
How Digital Signatures secures a document
In a typical Digital Signatures process, an application secures the document using the following steps:
• Retrieves a PDF document from a specified repository
• Applies a digital signature by using a credential (private key) in a specified keystore
• Passes a document back to the process for archiving, delivery, and other actions, as appropriate.
In another example, a custom application created by using the Java API uses these steps:
• Gets a series of documents
• Applies a digital signature to all of them, and passes a document back to the process for archiving, delivery, and
other actions, as appropriate.
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