Digital signature and PKI

[Michel Gendron]

Hi,
at this point, we still continue to autentify all our drawing on paper. We searching a way to sign them electronicaly. I've look to Adobe 6.0, it seem to be very close to my needs, but still missing something.

These are my questions:

• What do you use for digital sigature?
• How do you manage & store signed drawing & 3D model?
• How can you make sure that the signed drawing will not be modify?
• How can you make sure that the printed drawing on the field is the one that came out of an autentified electronic drawing?

Anybody go this problem before? How did you solved those

[Michel Gendron]

This is just my idea to slove this problem. It might be good or not, please give me you comments.

We create the drawing as usual and save it in model manager. Than, we add inside the drawing the official "engineer" signature and plot to a pdf file. By creating a PDF using Adobe 6.0, we can add digital signature, so it solve the problem about the integrity and autentification. We need to save the pdf with the original drawing.

The 2D drawing with the signature most not be saved, otherwise anybody will be able to reuse his signature... Or modify the drawing with signature on it.

To make sure the printed copy is the one that was in the pdf, I think the only way will be to ask to the guy who printed it to sign something like:
Integrity checked by: Michel Gendron

I still having a problem: the signature itself. How can we make sure that the file is signed by the right guy? Do we need to use USB key or biotronic device? It think than "verisign" like autentification are tie to machine so anybody a that machine can somehow gain access to this information, no?

What do you think?