Each electronic document (or electronic record in RULONA-speak) requires an electronic notarial certificate attached or logically associated with it. Each of these certificates will necessarily be different because (a) the name(s) of the signer(s) are different, the date is different, and the nature of the notarial act (oath, acknowledgement, etc.) is different. That's one kind of certificate.
Most of the state laws try to be technology-neutral, so they won't say you HAVE to use an X-509 certificate issued by a certificate authority, but that's the only game in town, so in effect, you have to (although the platform you choose might use it under-the-covers, so you don't notice you used it. A sample may be found at:
http://fm4dd.com/openssl/certexamples.htm
Download, for example, 4096 RSA cert and look at it with Notepad on Windows. It won't make any sense. I can tell you from working with these that such a certificate is incapable of containing a notarial seal.
There could be some other kind of certificate a state might issue indicating a person is an electronic notary. If such exists, it would be called whatever the state law or regulation calls it. It would be helpful to refer to such a thing by the exact name provided in the state law or regulation; it's confusing to just call it a certificate when there are at least two other kinds of certificate to be concerned with. |