Digital Signatures

Revu supports digital certification of PDFs and digitally signing PDFs. These two actions have some similarities, and can be done at the same time, but they are distinct. Before beginning, it is important to understand both concepts:

  • Digital Certification is the act of certifying the accuracy of a document. When a document is digitally certified, its page content is locked to prevent changes. The certifier can opt to allow limited changes that do not affect this content (for example, adding markups, completing form fields or applying digital signatures).
  • Digital Signatures are independently validated signatures placed on a document by somebody to approve the document in its current state. If changes are made to the document after the digital signature is placed, the status of the signature changes accordingly.
    • An important distinction between digital signatures and electronic signatures is that the latter are not validated for authenticity. An electronic signature is simply an electronic representation of somebody's autograph; a digital signature contains a unique digital ID to verify its authenticity.

Revu supports both adding digital signature fields to PDFs and applying digital signatures to those fields. You can create and validate signatures from self-signed certificates, which is ideal for certification that occurs within organizations or among trusted parties. Revu also supports commercially available certificates purchased from trusted third-party Certificate Authorities.

Revu validates and signs documents based on the Windows Certificate Store and the PKCS #12 standards. Revu also supports Adobe CDS signatures.