The SP Group’s digitally signed documents

We have been offering our customers the option of having their documents digitally signed for some time, instead of having a traditional hand-written signature on them. There are several benefits for you of choosing this option.

• With a digital signature in the document, you can confirm the identity of the person who has signed it, and you can also check that the original content of the document has not changed.
• This procedure will also give you a better visual quality, as we will not have to scan our reports after they have been signed manually. This is particularly noticeable when the documents contain pictures, tables or diagrams. The file size of a digitally signed document, too, is a lot less than that of a scanned document.
• The more rational document management within the SP Group means that you can access your documents more quickly and more easily.

What do you need in order to verify the content and signature of a document?

Our digitally signed documents are in PDF format, and we recommend that you should be using Adobe Acrobat Reader version 6.0 or later. Click the link on the right to download the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader.

One of the advantages of a digitally signed document is that you can always see if the document has been changed after it has been signed. No special software is required in order to see this: see below how to verify this in Adobe Acrobat Reader.

What you do need to do, however, in order to be able to verify who has signed a digitally signed document from the SP Group, is to install our root certificate and to alter a setting in Adobe Acrobat Reader. This only has to be done once.

There are two different ways of doing this. The easiest is to use our installation guide, which will perform the installation for you automatically.

Depending on which operating system and web browser you have, as well as on the browser’s security settings, you may not be able to use the automatic installation procedure. If so, go to the manual guide, which will guide you through the installation and configuration steps. If in any doubt or difficulty, contact your IT department.

How can I see that a document is unchanged and verified?

Open the PDF document. Right-click the signature field in the PDF document and choose "Validate the signature". If a green tick appears, the document is unchanged after signing, and the signature is valid. Try this out with our digitally signed text document that you can find on the right of this page under the Document heading.

Questions and answers on the SP Group’s digitally signed documents

You can find more on the page “Questions and answers on the SP Group’s digitally signed documents”, or open the “Customer verification of the SP Group’s digital signature” document, which you can find in the right-hand column under the Documents heading.