Digital Signatures in InfoPath enabled SharePoint 2010 Forms

Question

I need to deploy digital signatures (DS) in InfoPath Enabled SharePoint Forms.

Its totally new area for me hence I have following questions:

1. What types of DS work in InfoPath 2010 & how does it work?
2. From where do I purchase DS?
3. How to deploy it in SharePoint 2010?

Answer 1

Using DS in InfoPath depends on how you are adding it. You can enable it for full form or for sections. 2007 only supported DS on sections when deployed as a web form, I'm not sure if 2010 has this limitation.

Some links to read:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath-help/digital-signatures-in-infopath-2010-HA010381868.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/infopath/archive/2010/02/18/digital-signature-support-in-infopath-2010.aspx

You can get a certificate from a certificate authority like Verisign or Thawte. If you are deploying for company use and you use AD for all your users you can look at standing up certificate services and issuing your own certificates.

You can deploy an InfoPath form with DS blocks just like any other InfoPath form, that is publish it to a form library. No special handling required.

Answer 2

You can also use The CoSign Connector for SharePoint. It integrates with SharePoint and enables server-side digital signing of InfoPath forms and standard doc types such as .doc, .docx, .xls, etc from the SharePoint web user interface (using any browser).

Disclosure: I work for CoSign.