DOCUMENT SECURITY 101

A recent article in the ARIDO dimensions magazine discussed legal and technical issues surrounding document protection. The article presented a number of issues and provided some good background information on overall techniques and issues surrounding digital copyright and document protection strategies.

This article - a short but sweet follow-up - will provide some very simple but effective technical steps you can take to protect your work when creating documents and e-mailing them to your clients or other third-parties.

Many people don't think of the fact that a simple Microsoft Word document is, by default, open for editing when they send it off to someone. I've seen cases where small businesses use Word to create their invoices and then e-mail them to their clients. Unless you take some simple steps to secure that document it is totally open for editing by your client. Depending on the version of Word which you are using, all you need to do is to select Tools > Options > Security tab and set a "Password to Modify" the document. This applies in all versions of Word dating back to Office 2000 (MS has just released Office System 2003 so that's three generations back). It's a very simple trick, but it works.

You can use a similar strategy in Adobe Acrobat, which makes it a good format for sending drawings in. When you create an Acrobat (.pdf) file, prior to saving it go to File > Document Security, select "Acrobat Standard Security" and set a Master Password. You can also determine what level of access to the document you want to allow, such as "No Printing", "Low Resolution Printing", "No Changing the Document", etc. Again, a very simple trick, but highly effective. I particularly like the "Low Resolution Printing" option for drawings since it protects against scanning as well.

For more information on protecting your documents please contact:

CG Technologies Corporation
acommisso@cgtechnologies.com
http://www.cgtechnologies.com