The keystore is locked to individual devices so it cannot be copied and moved elsewhere. This can either be installed on a device Windows, Mac, iOS, Android , run from a USB stick completely offline zero installation solution , or accessed via a web browser zero installation. When a user opens a protected PDF document the Viewer checks to see if the decryption key is available.
If it is not present then the Viewer checks with the administration server to see if the user is authorized to view the protected PDF. If they are, the decryption key is transparently relayed to the client and the protected document opens. DRM controls are enforced by the Viewer software. Safeguard protects PDF files from printing — it disables printing of PDF documents by default so you do not have to apply any additional controls to stop a PDF being printed.
As well as using Safeguard to stop PDF printing for specific or all documents, you can stop printing on a user basis — you can disable PDF printing for some users but allow printing for others using the same protected document you only have to protect the document once for all users rather than on an individual basis.
Documents can be protected with zero prints available to stop PDF being printed and then individual users can be granted print rights by altering the number of prints available. If you allow printing, you can limit the number of times a PDF can be printed by each user in order to stop users distributing high quality copies of documents to others. Document watermarking is recommended if you allow printing to discourage photocopies being made — see PDF watermarking below. The important issue is not whether you can stop a PDF being copied but whether the recipient of the copied file can use it.
If you encrypt a PDF with a password you can give a copy of the PDF to another user along with the password and they can use the file. So the protection provided is worthless as a useful copy was made that could be used with others.
Safeguard effectively stops PDF copying because a copy of the protected file is of no use to another user without the decryption key to open it. Decryption keys are stored encrypted in a keystore which is locked to the device it was registered on — so only authorized users can open protected PDF files.
Authorized users must be prevented from saving the PDF in unprotected format so no editing or saving options should be made available and unprotected files should never be stored on disk in temporary files where they could be easily recovered. For additional security the PDF Reader should prevent screen grabbing, and document owners should disable printing so photocopies cannot be made of printed documents. If you are going to stop document sharing and editing then you have to stop Save As from being used so PDF documents cannot be saved in unprotected formats.
The simplest way to do this is to not have the facility available to begin with. Some products use JavaScript to disable the Save As menu item or short-keys, but JavaScript can be easily removed or turned off in a browser environment and so cannot be used securely. The only documents that can be copied are protected PDF files and they are useless to unauthorized recipients as they need the correct decryption keys to open them.
You might want to think again. The way every browser works is by caching information to disk. And browser environments are possibly the least secure of all because if no software is installed on a device then you have no control over the actual environment so stopping screen grabbing and printing to file drivers is not possible.
Please try again later! Please enter the password with the correct permission. Start Add example file. Set password to open the document This password can be used to prevent unwanted access to the file. Enter open password. Repeat open password. Set password to restrict permissions This password can be used to limit functionality of the pdf. Repeat permission password. Optional Settings. Rasterize: For more security, you can select this option to prevent others from editing the document or revealing potential hidden areas, as all contents will be merged into one, non-searchable layer.
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