VeriSign's New Document Signer(SM) Bundled With Adobe Acrobat 4.0
PR Newswire, Tuesday, February 16, 1999 at 08:47
Enables Digital Signing of Electronic Documents Using VeriSign Digital
Certificates
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- VeriSign, Inc.
(NASDAQ:VRSN), the world's leading provider of Internet trust services, today
announced the availability of VeriSign Document Signer(SM), a software module
that enables users to secure and authenticate Adobe(R) Portable Document
Format (PDF) files using VeriSign digital certificates. The introduction of
the VeriSign Document Signer, bundled with Adobe's Acrobat(R) 4.0 software,
significantly expands the potential for appending a "digital signature" to an
electronic document, providing the critical element of non-repudiation
necessary to take electronic commerce to the next level. Using a VeriSign
digital certificate and the Document Signer, users can now digitally sign a
PDF document directly within Acrobat, validating the content of the file and
allowing others to authenticate the identity of the document's author.
"The VeriSign Document Signer makes protecting the integrity of
mission-critical Adobe PDF documents fast and intuitive for any Acrobat user,"
said Joel Geraci, product manager, Adobe Systems Incorporated. "Today's
office environment requires digital signatures to assure document security for
information exchanges electronically. By adding digital signature
capabilities to Adobe Acrobat 4.0, we are providing a solid mechanism for
exchanging information."
Together with the Digital Signature tool in Acrobat, users can "sign" PDF
files using a VeriSign digital certificate and distribute these files via
e-mail or on intranet or extranet servers. Upon accessing a signed PDF
document, Acrobat users can click on the digital signature appended to the
document to ensure that the document was signed by a valid user, and that it
was not altered or tampered with in any way en route. And with Acrobat's
Document Compare features, users can also improve version control and track
changes by comparing versions of a single PDF document, identifying changes
that were made between digital signatures applied by different reviewers.
With the VeriSign Document Signer, any Acrobat user can quickly and easily
obtain a VeriSign digital certificate via a direct link to VeriSign's online
data center. For organizations that have deployed VeriSign's OnSite(SM) PKI
solution, users can take advantage of the digital certificates issued by an
enterprise; an enterprise using OnSite, in turn, can customize the Document
Signer to use customized certificate sign-up pages.
"With Acrobat, Adobe has solved the problem of cross-platform,
cross-application digital document delivery," said Richard Yanowitch, vice
president of marketing for VeriSign. "We're very pleased that by
incorporating the VeriSign Document Signer, Adobe is leading the way for even
more widespread adoption of digital certificates, which enable Acrobat
customers to share PDF files electronically without having to worry that they
are being altered or tampered with."
VeriSign digital certificates and Acrobat's collaboration and annotation
tools enable the highly controlled review of electronic documents in many
security-sensitive environments, including the legal, financial, and
government communities. Using the VeriSign Document Signer, users can now
efficiently create and revise a variety of PDF documents, such as legal
contracts, expense reports, benefits applications, insurance documents,
medical forms, and regulatory submissions to government agencies -- ensuring
content integrity, verifying authorship, and tracking revisions. The Food and
Drug Administration, for example, has made PDF the standard format for drug
approval submissions. And for e-commerce and intranet transactions, users can
create PDF forms with signature fields that can be signed with digital
certificates.
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