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• Posted April 26, 2016, 12:26 p.m. - 8 years ago

PDF Certificate Security

You may think that using a password on valuable PDF documents is enough, and to some degree, password protection does give security against unauthorised access by people not allowed to view the file. However, passwords can be guessed or shared accidentally, so enabling certificate security is the next step up, and ensures that the person’s identity is verified before they can view the document. This will help prevent against tampering and eavesdropping from unauthorised personnel.

What does Certificate Security mean?

Certificate Security on the web for a HTTPS website uses SSL encryption to verify a server’s identity, but when it comes to document certificate security, this verifies the user’s virtual identity instead, using unique electronic keys allocated by the document owner.

Implementing Certificate Security

Each PDF file will need two parts; a unique private key and a unique public key. All who should have access to the file will require a public key and the owner of the document retains possession of the private key. Both parts will need to be on your computer at all times.

To obtain these keys, you will need to create Digital IDs for each user, and from this you will get the keys as above. You need a list of the public keys for all users of the document, and with this you can then create the Certificate Security permissions for each user. This means that different people can have different levels of security from read/write/edit etc.

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