The University only releases digital academic documents through the My eQuals portal that have been cryptographically signed. The My eQuals portal should display the blue 'Certified' ribbon against each document. This ribbon indicates that the document has been securely cryptographically signed. 
 

If you are using Adobe or an application that uses Adobe settings, you may experience the error: 'The validity of the document certification is UNKNOWN. The author could not be verified. Signed and all signatures are valid.' To fix the issue they go to Preference and follow these steps Can you try this. Adobe Preferences > Signatures > Verification, More > untick "require certificate revocation checking to succeed". Once Adobe is restarted, the issue should resolve. If the issue persists, seek further assistance from an IT professional to resolve the issue. 

This issue should not occur when viewing the document within the My eQuals portal. If the PDF is not able to be verified, view your document by logging into your My eQuals account or, if you're a third party, request the document owner send you a shared link.