Acrobat5.0 software and the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) will act as the foundation for the solutions, which will be sold by Mitsubishi Electric Information Systems and are expected to be available in the second half of calendar year 2001.
In support of the combined effort, Mitsubishi Electric has developed a digital signature plug-in to Acrobat 5.0 software that enables the seamless integration of Acrobat into the Mitsubishi Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) system. As a result, customers of the forthcoming solutions will have the ability to view, print and digitally sign Adobe PDF documents securely and easily using tools included in Acrobat 5.0. When digitally signing an Adobe PDF file, an individual will verify his or her identity using an Integrated Circuit (IC) card–or smart card–which holds the user’s personal digital certificate. Once the person’s identity has been verified online by the Mitsubishi Certificate Authority, the transaction will be completed.
We are pleased to collaborate with Adobe in developing an electronic-authentication solutions program, said Tamotsu Nomakuchi, executive vice president of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and president of the Information Systems & Network Service Group. Because the program is being built on readily available open standards and technologies like Adobe PDF and IC cards, we believe it will help drive the widespread growth of digital signatures in Japan.
