Digital signatures

A digital signature is a digital stamp that a user can add to an electronic document.

This stamp is unique to the user and is difficult to forge.

The digital signature ensures that any modifications someone makes to the signed document can be detected. They will make the signature invalid and fail further verification.

  • Public - available to all users
  • Private - restricted to certificate owner

You can obtain digital certificates for Content Manager from certifying authorities such as:

Each user can set up their own digital certificates or an organisation can administer them centrally.

To use digital certificates across a company or large organisation, each user who needs to verify another's digital signature in Content Manager will need that person's public certificate.

To facilitate this, a network administrator can implement an organisation wide rollout of public certificates.

Consult your network administrator for further details.

NOTE: Digital signatures and client or Workgroup caching - when an electronic record in Content Manager has been signed with a digital signature and the document in the store is modified outside of Content Manager, any attempt to verify the digital signature will use the cached version of the document - if there is a cached version - for as long as the cached version exists.

The signature verification process will succeed even though the actual document in the store is not the document that was signed.

About caching of documents

  • If the cache size limit - if there is one set - is reached, older cached documents are replaced with new documents
  • If the cache is set to remove old documents within a certain number of days, Content Manager removes the documents after the set number of days
  • If the local client cache is cleared manually - through Options - Store Caching, Content Manager replaces cached documents with new documents
  • If the Workgroup Server cache is set to keep documents only up to a certain age, in days, Content Manager will remove the documents when they reach that age.
  • A Workgroup Server cache with no size or age limits and a local client cache with a large size limit can keep a document for a long period of time.

For related information, see Security through digital signatures.

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