Using digital signature to validate fragments of a document

[Angel Lopez]

Hello,

I'm trying Microsoft Office 2007 beta because I'm very interested on its
digital signature improvements, and where I'm most interested is on Microsoft
Word.
It's very interesting that Word can add more than one signature on a single
document. But when you add the first signature, all the document is
unchangeable from this moment.
There are third-party softwares (like Cosign, for example) that let you
digitally sign a fragment of a document with one signature and other fragment
with other signature.

I think that this functionality is very, very interesting to use Word-based
documents and digital signatures on enterprise workflows.

Is Microsoft planning to add this functionality on the Office 2007 final
release?

Thank you very much,

ANGEL LOPEZ


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[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Angel,

MS Office 2007 has been finalized and is available from http://trymicrosoftoffice.com.

There are more Digital Rights Management features in the Enterprise (volume licensed) products than in the retail ones and the
workflows, tied to Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 and MS Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (which include the use of MS Windows
Workflow Foundation) for improving collaboration within a closed loop appear to have a good deal of capability. You may want to
check with the folks in the Sharepoint or DRM newsgroups to see what is possible in those instances.

As with Office 2003 you can sign individual macro projects in addition to the document and 2007 has the Digital signature line as
well (where you can request a collborator to 'sign' the document (and you can have multiple signature lines) where each signature is
said to add a digital signature when completed
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA100997681033.aspx

You can have multiple signatures on a document, but if the document content changes it invalidates all of the signatures. (Adding a
signature marks a document as final and turns off the editing elements of the Ribbon).

There are also 3rd party add-ins for digital signing that work with Word. (http://office.microsoft.com/marketplace for example),
but I don't recall offhand that they have the ability to sign only a section of a document if that is pulled into the document, but
they may have the ability to work on linked document objects.

================
Hello,

I'm trying Microsoft Office 2007 beta because I'm very interested on its
digital signature improvements, and where I'm most interested is on Microsoft
Word.
It's very interesting that Word can add more than one signature on a single
document. But when you add the first signature, all the document is
unchangeable from this moment.
There are third-party softwares (like Cosign, for example) that let you
digitally sign a fragment of a document with one signature and other fragment
with other signature.

I think that this functionality is very, very interesting to use Word-based
documents and digital signatures on enterprise workflows.

Is Microsoft planning to add this functionality on the Office 2007 final
release?

Thank you very much,

ANGEL LOPEZ >>
--

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

 

[Angel Lopez]

Hello Bob,

Thank you very much for your quick answer. I think that the third-party
add-ins available at Microsoft's marketplace have not the posibility of
signing only parts of the document. We have tried only the beta version
because it's the version that was available at http://trymicrosoftoffice.com.
We are waiting to receive the Volume License CDs because we have Software
Assurance contract.

I suppose that using the Sharepoint workflows would add us more
functionalities, but we have a workflow engine on our production environment,
not Microsoft-based. Use a Sharepoint workflow for digitally signed documents
is not the best solution.

So, the objective of this thread was to know if Microsoft Office 2007 will
support digital signatures on fragments of documents. Maybe some other people
would think that it would be an interesting functionality...

Regards,

ANGEL LOPEZ

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Angel,

The products on http://trymicrosoftoffice.com are the released product, not a beta with retail product keys so you would be
missing some enterprise features, but the media is also available separately from Microsoft for download for Volume License holders.

For the workflows, Office can work with both Sharepoint and Windows Workflow Foundation. You may want to check with the folks in
the Office Dev discussion group (link below) and/or the blogs or forums for workflow from this page for more details and to chat
with the folks who drive that functionallity
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa663328.aspx

While I see value with being able to 'tag' only part of a document a concern I would have with signing only a fragment is that a
document may be considered 'accepted' as signed and authenticated when only one piece of it might be and that could lead to
misinterpretations within the larger document context.

===========
Hello Bob,

Thank you very much for your quick answer. I think that the third-party
add-ins available at Microsoft's marketplace have not the posibility of
signing only parts of the document. We have tried only the beta version
because it's the version that was available at http://trymicrosoftoffice.com.
We are waiting to receive the Volume License CDs because we have Software
Assurance contract.

I suppose that using the Sharepoint workflows would add us more
functionalities, but we have a workflow engine on our production environment,
not Microsoft-based. Use a Sharepoint workflow for digitally signed documents
is not the best solution.

So, the objective of this thread was to know if Microsoft Office 2007 will
support digital signatures on fragments of documents. Maybe some other people
would think that it would be an interesting functionality...

Regards,

ANGEL LOPEZ >>
--
Please let us know if this has helped,

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

LINKS
A. Specific newsgroup/discussion group mentioned in this message:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.officedev
or via browser:
http://microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/?dg=microsoft.public.officedev

B. MS Office Community discussion/newsgroups via Web Browser
http://microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx
or
Microsoft hosted newsgroups via Outlook Express/newsreader
news://msnews.microsoft.com

 

[Fred Webster]

I too am very interested in this subject of being able to add a digital
signatures to various documents, spreedsheets, etc. The questions that I
have for Microsoft are as follows:

1) Why doesn't Microsoft add this feature to it's Office suite and not
depend on third parties to develop this solution?

2) With the requirements set for in HSPD-12 for the use of Public Key
Infrastructure (PKI) for secure logon and other things, does Microsoft plan
to add On-line Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) to the mix for Office when
digital certificates are used for signing operations or?

Thanks,

--Fred Webster