Digitally Signing PDF's
Digitally Signing PDF's
(OP)
My board is now requiring us to have a third party signature verification service certify our electronic documents.
Does anybody use https://www.globalsign.com/en/?
You have to pay about $300 per year for 500 uses and it requires a USB dongle that interfaces with Acrobat.
If not, what are others using?
Just another cost for my business that will do absolutely nothing to prevent fraud.
Does anybody use https://www.globalsign.com/en/?
You have to pay about $300 per year for 500 uses and it requires a USB dongle that interfaces with Acrobat.
If not, what are others using?
Just another cost for my business that will do absolutely nothing to prevent fraud.





RE: Digitally Signing PDF's
RE: Digitally Signing PDF's
RE: Digitally Signing PDF's
RE: Digitally Signing PDF's
I am not sure how they would know, but if they ever got a hold of one of my drawings they could probably figure it out.
My guess s the penalty would be a slap on the wrist since most of my competitors don't use it either - much cheaper than me paying about $500 per year for this.
RE: Digitally Signing PDF's
As I understand it, its not an issue if the certificate is only used internally and allocated against the company's internal certificate as anyone internal to the company can verify it, but any external issued signature can't be verified in the same manner.
I also suspect this is an area where IT aspects on how to carry this out are not clear. Use of a board designated certificate authority makes a lot of that easier, even though there's a cost associated.
RE: Digitally Signing PDF's
Correct.
Funny thing is that I called the board secretary (anonomously) and she said she just took a class on this and you can just use Acrobat self signed - which totally conflicts with what they have in writing. I think i will just keep doing that until something shifts.
RE: Digitally Signing PDF's
RE: Digitally Signing PDF's
RE: Digitally Signing PDF's
This situation just irritates me. I don't see how any of these methods will prevent any sort of fraud. Look at those two clowns in California who practiced for years without licenses. When I order my PE stamp, they did not ask for ID.
RE: Digitally Signing PDF's
So a digital signature of any kind is ridiculous in my view.
What I ultimately have to protect myself is the digital copy (digitally sealed) that i originally sent to my client. No one can change that because I keep it locally and can use it to prove what I originally sealed.
In my local state, the board has recently concluded about the same thing and now doesn't mandate an electronic signature but leaves the "protection of your seal" to the individual discretion of the engineer.
Check out Eng-Tips Forum's Policies here:
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
RE: Digitally Signing PDF's
This has always been the case for a physical seal in every state in which I'm licensed. Makes sense to apply the same rule to digital signatures.
RE: Digitally Signing PDF's
Follow the money!
RE: Digitally Signing PDF's
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"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill
RE: Digitally Signing PDF's
Also, Bluebeam has a list of certificate authorities they've tested. CA's. My company uses Verisign.
RE: Digitally Signing PDF's
Thanks