FDA FAQs

• The FDA's Webtrader Account Checklist will help you keep track of your progress and provide additional details on the account setup process.

• GlobalSign's PersonalSign products are fully compatible with the FDA ESG.

• You must use an e-mail address associated with your business. The e-mail must also contain your name.

• SHA256 Compatibility

• You can use SHA-256 Certificates to make FDA submissions.

• The FDA supports SHA-256 for both the ESG and for S/MIME (secure/encrypted email purposes). All customers should use SHA-256 Certificates for FDA related use cases. Please note: GlobalSign has deprecated SHA-1 PersonalSign (Client Certificates) on December 2017. 

• The FDA is in the midst of migrating to a new S/MIME proxy which supports SHA-256. Any newly added users are being added to this new system. 

• The FDA is allowing those customers with unexpired SHA-1 Certificates to continue to use them. The migration is domain by domain, so if one person from an existing domain which is still on the old S/MIME system wants to upgrade to SHA-256, all users set up for S/MIME from their domain would have to be migrated over at the same time to support that. The FDA is working with those who need to be moved over earlier as well, vs. waiting for their migration phase. 

• ESG accounts cannot be shared.

• Each individual must have their own account.

• Each individual is limited to one account.

• There is no limit to the total number of accounts held by a company.

• The registered e-mail address must be for an individual and not a group e-mail. 

When you’ve completed your checklist, you can start the enrollment process using the steps in FDA ESG (Legacy) Guidelines article.

You can reissue your Certificate through your GCC account using the following guide: Reissue Client Certificate.

For steps on how to renew, simply follow the instructions on this guide: Update Public Key - FDA ESG (Renewals & Reissues)

If you no longer have a copy of the original Certificate downloaded on your computer, then you will need to reissue the Certificate to receive in a new .pfx file. 

Errors can occur when using your PersonalSign Certificate, for more information about why the error may be happening, please see Common Errors. 

For a step-by-step process, please refer to this page.