It has become a commonplace for firms to send attachments in PDF format to limit the ability of recipients to edit them. Some firms go so far as to scan documents without OCR’ing them, thinking that this makes them more “secure.”
While this is not the case, there are a number of ways in which Acrobat files can be “locked down.”
If you go into File | Properties and select the “Security” tab, you can determine whether or not the document can be printed; whether content can be copied (to prevent someone from simply copying the content into Word), whether the document can be changed, whether pages can be extracted, etc. In addition, simply creating a PDF file does not entirely remove all the metadata from a Word document. However, there is a separate Acrobat function to remove metadata, if this is an area of concern.
And this does not count the more advanced security features of digital signatures, passwording or encrypting documents, and so on.
So PDF files can easily be secured, but simply creating a PDF file may not by itself, give you the security you want.
If your recipient also has Acrobat professional, they can easily un-secure the file to do what they want with it. I received a pdf that was secured to where I couldn't print it. Acrobat Pro removed the security in about 5 minutes for me. Digital signatures are much more secure, but I am sure they can be broken as well. All the security in the world is useless if you are dealing with a dishonest or unethical person. Conversely, if your working with an ethical individual, no security is necessary, other than to protect clients' confidentiality. The hard part is knowing who you are working with.
Posted by: Thomas | April 23, 2008 at 09:37 AM