Digitally signing document templates

A document template in IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization - Publishing can be digitally signed by using a private key that is available in the key store. Digital signatures enable confident sharing of templates from trusted sources.

About this task

An administrator or template designer must use their organization private key and public key pair or generate a key pair and store them in a key store. The public key should be shared with all the users who generate the document-style report so that the template's digital signature can be verified.
Note: The sample templates that are provided with PUB are digitally signed. Any modifications to these templates will invalidate the digital signature.

Procedure

  1. In the Document Studio application, click Window > Preferences > PUB > Document Design > Digital Signature.
  2. Provide key store details to digitally sign a document template:
    1. Path to key store: The location of the key store that PUB looks in to digitally sign a document template. The key store must contain private keys for digitally signing templates.
    2. Key store password: The password to read the keys from the key store.
    3. Key store type: The type of the key store.
    4. Private key alias name: The private key that is used from the key store to digitally sign a template.
    5. Private key password for alias: The password for reading the private key from the key store to digitally sign a template for the selected private key alias.
  3. Click Apply and OK.
  4. In Document Studio, click Template > Digitally Sign Template.
    If you did not provide your private key details in the preferences, a dialog provides a list of all available private keys available. Select the private key and enter the password.

Results

The template is digitally signed. If you edit the template after the template is signed, the digital signature is invalidated. You must digitally sign the template again after you complete editing the template.

To enable verification of the template's signature while loading in Document Studio, ensure that you populate the Path to key store and the Key store passwordfields. If this setting is enabled and the template is not signed, a warning is shown in the Studio editor that the template is not digitally signed.