Formatta products support X.509 certificates and provide methods to manage certificates installed on the local system, importing certificates from certificate files or forms, and specifying which certificate is to be used with subsequent cryptographic operations.
The Certificates Manager can be selected from the Security tab of the Tools | Options menu of both Designer and Filler, and is very similar to the one found in Internet Explorer, Outlook, and Outlook Express, giving users a familiar interface to work with. There are certificate stores for Personal, Other People, Intermediate Certification Authorities, and Trusted Root Certification Authorities. The user can import or remove certificates, and view certificate details and status, etc.
In addition to the features found in the system certificate manager, by using Formatta's certificate manager the users are given immediate feedback on the status of the certificate without the need to open each certificate. The certificate icons in the list are different for valid and invalid certificates, as well as for certificates with unknown status.
Also, the user has the option to check the revocation status of the certificate at any time, if the Certification Authority supports online revocation checking. To do this, an additional button is available on the certificate details dialog window.
A personal certificate must be selected before signing or encrypting with Digital Certificates. If you have more than one certificate, select the desired certificate using the Certificates Manager to perform individual operations.
The signing operation requires the private key to be available at the moment of signing. When encrypting data or locking the form without signing it, the private key will not be used; however, without it you will not be able to decrypt the data or unlock a saved form, respectively.
If a user wants to encrypt data in a form designed to use Digital Certificates encryption and he or she doesn't have a personal certificate, a warning is displayed warning that the user will not be able to decrypt the data later.
The personal certificate is embedded in the form, which is a convenient way to transmit the certificate to other users, and can be used by other users to verify signatures.
All certificates used for locking, encrypting, and signing are embedded in the form. This is a very convenient way for the recipients of the form to update their certificate stores on the system.
When a user opens a form, the certificates embedded in the form are compared with the certificates installed on the user's system. If there are new certificates in the form, the user is given a list of the new certificates and can then install them.