Adobe Acrobat Pro Security Features

[MUYA]

Hey guys and possibly gals

Need to ask does anybopdy have experience with Adobe Acrobat Pro and using security features? I am looking at ways of protecting my company's intelectual property rights ie documents I have and others have been working on. We need to password rotect which i hear is easy to do but I need to know of how to disable printing and possibly just allowing the pdf file to open only in a computer that has been desingated to do so? So any help on this and futher security features is much appreciated thanks.

At work we have Adobe Acrobat Pro 5 only though, keep that in mind folks :)

[rewt]

http://www.adobe.com/products/server/policy/main.html


Using Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server, your organization can:

-Reduce the costs and risks of distributing confidential information

-Control document access and usage rights online or offline, inside or outside the firewall

-Know when a document has been viewed, printed, or altered

-Extend version control beyond document and content management systems

-Provide more assurance that only intended recipients can open, use, or forward a document

-Leverage Adobe Acrobat® and free Adobe Reader® software to author and view protected documents

-Revoke access to previously distributed documents

-Aggregate group information and check user credentials against existing authentication directories

[Clay]

I'd upgrade to the 7.0. Past versions security features can be circumvented for those who really want to.

[MUYA]

thanks rewt, I have the security guide from adobe as well but, I was interested in personal feedbacks and best practises :) We do not want our documents to fall into the wrong hands (competitors) :D

[Clay]

Have you considered PGP?

[MUYA]

Upgrade is not an option nor is the lifecycle server option :) This is due to our IT dept being ...erm....erm....hmm...I wanna be politically correct here....nevermind

The jist of it is as a departmetn we want to take proactive steps in assuring our intellectual property cannot o does not fall into the wrong hands. If they do get it, we want to make sure they cannot infringe on our intelectual property :)

[rewt]

Unfortunately I cannot comment on Acrobat 5, but I do own a copy of Acrobat 7.0 Pro and it makes it very easy to secure any document. Here is an example screen I see after clicking "Secure > Secure this document > Policy > Restrict Opening and Editing Using Passwords" on the toolbar.

http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/7976/acro74ql.th.png (http://img360.imageshack.us/my.php?image=acro74ql.png)

[MUYA]

Thanks Rewt

[rewt]

Sure thing, if you need anything else just let us know. :)

[ricercar]

Muya
My profession is publishing in print, web, and Acrobat. If you want to chat, PM me and we can arrange to IM or something. However, Newt is correct in his approach. Use the File > Document Properties > Security options of Acrobat. You can define separate passwords for <opening> and <printing/changing> a PDF document, as well as forbid cutting and pasting even for people with both passwords.

However, Acrobat 7 has been cracked. Additionally, based on my experience at the largest fabless semiconductor company in the world, determined customers will misbehave, even under NDA. it is known that Asian semiconductor customers pay high school kids minimum wage to transcribe "locked" Acrobat datasheets into copyable versions, 300 page hand-typed duplicates that avert NDA watermarks and secret file signatures.

There is no such thing as a secure document once it's been delivered to a customer.

[rewt]

You mean someone actually cracked a 128-bit AES encrypted document? :eek:

[MUYA]

Thanks Ricecar for your tips..will look it up, we use distiller here to erm print the pdf file and we can allocate open - password, limit what is copyable or printable etc ...we wanted a bit more like, abilty to stop ppl from saving the file from remote location where they open it from to saving it on their hdd (local) or preventing anyone from attaching it as an attachment into an email etc.

[MUYA]

Any more ideas guys?

[Clay]

Any more ideas guys?Have you considered PGP? (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=706048&postcount=5) ;)

[rewt]

lol @ Clay

PGP 9 is great! If theres anything that is secure, PGP is it. I run PGP Desktop 9 Pro with Whole Disk Encryption on my home PC.

[ricercar]

You mean someone actually cracked a 128-bit AES encrypted document? :eek:I don't know the specifics, but put in those words I'd be skeptical. Perhaps it was cracking Adobe's implementation rather than the encryption method.

Someone claimed to have opened a password-protected Acrobat 7 document without knowing the password. Since Acrobat 6 and 5 have been cracked, I didn't previously have any skepticism.