How to Get Your Electronic Certificate

NotaryHub.com by Everything Legal is partnered with SSL to provide cloud-based signing certificates to our users. 

These certificates are required by states that allow remote online notarizations; they digitally seal the final signed document that has been notarized online/remotely. This cryptographically verifiable, signed document will have your identity & Notary Public credentials embedded in the digital documents code - A digital signing certificate is not something you see on the face of the document.

The team at SSL is a leading certificate authority and provider of secure cloud signing, to provide you with legally compliant document signing certificates. Document signing certificates from SSL allow you to digitally sign documents as a Notary, and these digitally signed documents provide secure, cryptographic evidence that the document was notarized by you, and this digital signature becomes invalid if the document is altered.

As a publicly trusted certificate authority and member of the Adobe Approved Trust List (AATL), SSL's Business Identity certificates are depended on worldwide for signing electronic documents, including Adobe PDF and Microsoft Word documents.

A notary public is required to have, and use, an identity-based digital certificate to digitally seal each notarized document. Once a digital signature is applied, the electronic document is encrypted so that it cannot be modified; thereby protecting against digital tampering and creating a non-reputable legally binding document, in which relying parties can trust.

Orders for SSL document signing certificates and cloud signing services integrated with Notary Hub, undergo an identity validation process, which includes submission of your photo ID and personal info. 

Once all materials are submitted you can expect the validation process to take 1-5 working days. 

Signatures applied after the validation process will sign documents with your 'digital online signature' (think of it like your online fingerprint) containing your validated identity in a digital format recognized as legally binding in every state.

• 1-Year validity duration
• 4-Year validity duration (additional discounts provided for longer durations)

When you register as a new user on Notary Hub by Everything Legal, you get a special offer for a 5% one-time discount off the first year of your digital document signing certificate. 

If you plan to purchase your digital certificate through our partners at SSL to get a discount, select the term of your Notary Hub subscription and then click the ‘Proceed’ button at the bottom of the discount offer screen:

After you select to proceed, you will be redirected to the purchase certificate/register screen, where you will create your account with SSL.

The SSL registration screen will automatically populate with the username as the email you used to sign up with Notary Hub, BUT, it will require you to create a separate password for SSL - So you cannot use the same password you used for your Notary Hub account. 

IMPORTANT NOTES: 

• Due to the high-level security encryption process, the behind the scenes 'flow' of creating your SSL account & certificate, is a sensitive one! 
• Make sure the email you use to sign up is easily accessible to you, and it has no spam filter settings on that could possibly interfere with you receiving emails from SSL.
• If you change your email in Notary Hub AFTER purchasing your SSL certificate, you may experience issues during the ID validation process, so be sure the email you have set in Notary Hub is the one you want to use across both systems (Notary Hub & SSL)
• These emails contain the secure links you must follow to begin your identity verification, and successfully setup your account/create your digital signature -  If you don't get these emails, you can't successfully complete the process.

Once you have created the password you would like to use for your SSL account, click the ‘Purchase Certificate’ button at the bottom of the screen (be sure to take note of this separate password, you will need it later on)

Upon purchase, you will be automatically redirected back to your Notary Hub Dashboard, and a popup message will appear briefly that you have successfully purchased your digital certificate and to follow the instructions sent to the email you signed up with - This message will also appear in the header/onboarding section of your dashboard.

Under that you will see a ‘verify phone’ message - click the link to verify your phone # by receiving a one-time code via text - enter it on the next screen once you receive it.

After you verify your phone number, check your email. You will see an email from [email protected] with the subject line ACTION REQUIRED: Please verify your request for certificate issuance.

Click the link in that email to verify (confirm) your certificate order - You will be redirected to another screen, to choose how you want to proceed with ID verification, you will want to select to continue on mobile as it is the most user-friendly process (vs. webcam) 

Return to your email inbox to find the next email from SSL, this time coming from [email protected], with the subject line Your ID verification link.

Follow the link to begin your identity verification. You will need to use your mobile phone to capture your government-issued ID, along with a selfie. This verification is required for any new certificate, since each certificate is a private key that is linked with your identity as a notary.

**IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are not able to dedicate at least 10 mins to this ID validation process, DO NOT click the link. If you click the link just to "see" what the process will be, and do not complete the ID validation process, the system will think that you have failed ID validation.

Once you have completed your identity verification, your certificate request is reviewed by the SSL validations team. After review, your certificate will be issued. The review is a manual step and may take between 1-5 business days to complete.

After your certificate request has been reviewed and the certificate issued, you will get a new email from SSL with the subject line ACTION REQUIRED: Please enroll to securely sign documents

Prior to following the link to enroll, it's suggested that you first install an authenticator app on your mobile device:

• For Android, download Google Authenticator app from Google Play.

• For iOS, download Google Authenticator app from the App Store.

**If you don’t already have Google or Microsoft Authenticator (Google recommended) installed on your phone do that before going through the steps outlined below.

To download on iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google-authenticator/id388497605

To download on Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.authenticator2&hl=en_US&gl=US

Follow the link to enroll sent via email from SSL OR navigate to SSL.com to log into your SSL customer dashboard using the same email that you have for your Notary Hub account, and the password you set up when you purchased your SSL x.509 cert through your onbaording steps.

Select the ‘Orders’ tab in the header at the top of the screen, and expand your Certificate information by clicking in the green box under the Status section that says either 'validated' or ‘Issued’ – After the section expands to show more options, select ‘certificate details’ on the left-hand side under ‘certificate contents'

In the certificate details section, there will be a space on the right-hand side to a create a 4-digit PIN. The PIN must be composed of four different, non-repeating numbers.

After setting your PIN, you will be presented with a QR code to scan.

IMPORTANT NOTE: You must scan this QR code using an authenticator app, NOT your phone's camera.

Launch Google Authenticator on your mobile device and click the (+) icon in the lower right and select 'Scan QR Code' to scan the Enrollment QR code. 

After scanning the QR code, you will see 'eSigner' in your authenticator app with a revolving 6-digit security code. You will need to enter this 6-digit code at the end of each signing session to finalize the documents and end your session with your client.

NOTE: The 6-digit security code updates every 30 seconds, so keep that in mind when it comes time to enter it during a session. If it's about to change, wait until it updates, and a new code is shown.