Understanding certificates

When you create a digital ID, Nitro PDF Professional creates a profile for you. Your personal digital ID profile is something you own and you don't share with other users. When you sign a document, or you encrypt a document, you use your profile and the attributes assigned to the profile such as your password.

From your password profile you can export a certificate. The certificate you export is a public certificate and intended to be shared with other users. You can email your certificate to users, host it on a web site for anyone to download, or share it across a network server. Providing your certificate to other users does not compromise your security.

In addition to sharing your certificate, you can ask others to share their certificates with you. Once you have certificates from other users you can encrypt PDF documents using another user's certificate. That user would then open the file you secure using their certificate with the password the user added when creating a digital ID.

The value in securing files with certificate security is huge. For example, imagine you host a PDF form on your web site, and 50 users need to download the form, fill it out with sensitive data meant only for your eyes, and return the file to you. If all 50 users secure their individual copies of the document with Password Security, you need 50 passwords to open the document.

Now, imagine you host your public certificate on your web site along with the PDF form. Each user encrypts the PDF document using your public certificate. When all the forms are returned to you, you need only your password you used when you created your digital ID to open all 50 documents. Clearly, there is much benefit to using certificate security for these kinds of tasks.

Exporting a public certificate

To exchange your certificate with other users, you need to export the certificate from your digital ID profile.

To export a certificate:

1. Select Document > Self Sign Security > My Digital ID.
2. In the manage My Digital IDs window, select your certificate and click Export.
3. In the Export Date window, choose one of the following:
• Email the data to someone. If you want to export the certificate and email the file to a recipient, select this option.
• Save the data to a file. If you want to create a public certificate file that you can later email or host on your web site, select this option.
4. Click Next, and then either email the certificate or save it to your computer.

Managing identities

The Trusted Identities feature in Nitro PDF Professional is like an address book where you can easily manage certificates from trusted users. When you acquire certificates from other users you can add them to your Trusted Identities list and have them easily accessible when you want to encrypt files using certificates.

To add certificates to your Trusted Identites list:

1. Select Document > Self-Sign Security > Trusted Identities to open the Manage Trusted Identities window.
2. In the Manage Trusted Identities window, click Add Contacts.
3. Find the certificate on your computer and click Open to add it.