User manual

Managing digital ID certificates
A digital ID certificate contains a public key that is used to validate digital signatures and
to encrypt documents.
● Validating signatures. Before other users can validate your signature on documents they
receive, they must have access to your certificate, which you can share with them.
Likewise, other users can share their certificates with you so that you can build a list of
trusted user certificates, called trusted identities, for validating signatures. (See Validating
signatures.)
● Encrypting documents. If you're encrypting a document using certificates, you need access
to the certificates of the people for whom you're encrypting the document. You can use a
directory search to locate these trusted identities, or you can store the users' certificates in
your list of trusted identities. Acrobat keeps track of the trusted identities that you build.
You can also configure Windows Certificate Security to trust identities in the common
Windows Certificate Store. (See Setting Digital Signature preferences.) Third-party
providers may validate identities using other methods, or these validation methods may be
integrated with Acrobat.
Related Subtopics:
Sharing your digital ID certificate
Getting digital ID information from other users
Checking information on certificates
Determining the trust level of a certificate
Configuring identity search directories