Signing/approving an eForm -- digital certificate required, or is signing into LiveCycle enough?

[GlennCauley]

Our institute is looking at deploying LiveCycle and use it for form creation and workflow managment.

There are forms that will require approval/sign-off from multiple users at different stages of processing.

Currently, on our "non-workflowed" eForms we have an eSig field that a user must click on to put his/her digital certifcate there.

The person's digital certificate is taken from a hardware token that is plugged into the computer.

So here's what we see happening for a LiveCycle "workflowed" eForm...

1. User logs into the system with his/her credentials (username/password).

2. The system recognizes who the user is.  (E.g., Bob Smith, Manager of IT)

3. User opens up a form that requires his approval/signature.

4. User sees where he has to e-sign or give approval.... and clicks on the appropriate button (or similar).

Now the questions:

a) Confirm that the system recognizes who is logged in (e.g, Bob Smith).

b) Without having a digital certificate plugged in or installed (as with current), is there a way to make a form such that all Bob Smith has to do is click a button to give his approval on a section?   The signature wouldn't come from a certificate, but rather since the system know's it is Bob Smith logged in... it will put Bob Smith's "signature" on a field and this will be seen as an "approval" ?

What we are trying to accomplish is to remove the need for a digital certificate to sign or approve a form... but rather rely on the fact that the system knows it is Bob Smith logged on to the system and therefore when he gives his "approval" that the system accepts that (and moves the form the the next part of the process).

I hope I phrased this right, and that someone will be able to give us some insight...

Thanks in advance.

[Former Community Member]

The signature solution you are describing sounds like a "click-through" signature solution.  Here are some links to info that discuss this type of solution, hopefully you find the information useful...

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/pdfs/lc_digitalsig_wp_ue.pdf

http://blogs.adobe.com/security/2009/09/contracts_the_speed_of_light_a.html

http://blogs.adobe.com/security/2008/02/trust_us_electronic_signatures.html

http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/pdfs/95011606_Digital_Signature_wp_ue.pdf

By the way, you could achieve what you would like to do using LiveCycle.

Regards

Steve

[GlennCauley]

Thanks!

Actually, that is what we're heading towards... a LiveCycle solution.

With an eForm processed via LiveCycle, can someone sign-off a part of an eForm quickly and easily... using only his/her login credentials? 

Or does s/he still need a digicert?

[Former Community Member]

LiveCycle and Acrobat\Reader support the creation and validation of "Digital Signatures" using digital certificates.  A PDF form can contain one or more signature fields, so one or more people can sign the same form.  Whan a user signs the form they will require a digital certificate.

Digital Signatures provide a method of validating authenticity (the form was signed by the intended party) and data integrity (the data has not changed, or the changes that occurred were allows by the document author)

If you do not want or require the level of "protection" that digital signatures provides, thenm you may want to design you solution to use something like the "click-through" signature, which is NOT a "digital signature", but it can be considered as a type of "electronic signature"

There are many type of "electronic signatures", a "digital signature" is one type of electronic signature.

Hope this helps

Steve