Document security refers to various measures to safeguard your documents with different tools like password protection, authentication, secured access, etc.
These measures restrict access to the documents or prevent their content from being copied or misappropriated. They may also limit the period that a document is available or accessible. Additionally, these measures may restrict printing and sharing the content.
Why is Document Security Important?
In an increasingly digital world, it’s important to ensure your documents are protected. Security breaches can lead to sensitive information being leaked or documents being accessed by unauthorized persons. It can also lead to a loss of brand reputation and credibility.
Finally, it can have serious legal implications. Document security is a great way for businesses to secure confidential data. If you are publishing content online and distributing the document digitally, it’s all the more important to ensure that your document is safeguarded.
What are Some Common Features of Document Security?
Different document security features can be combined to provide multi-level security or to safeguard your document in different ways. These can be applied at various stages, such as accessing or downloading, purchasing or borrowing the document, viewing the document, and sharing the document.
Some common features of document security include the following:
- Restrictions on accessing the document
- Encrypting the document
- Watermarking the document
- Password protection
- Automatic expiry of the document or a limited viewing period
- Document tracking
1. Restricted Access
Many cloud services and collaborative tools provide features that enable you to restrict access to users. Access to sensitive documents can be provided only for authorized users.
You can restrict editing access to only those who need to edit the document while permitting others to read or add comments. Document security may also include features that ensure unauthorized efforts to access the documents result in warnings.
Restricted access plays a particularly important role in PDF document security. There are different ways to safeguard a PDF document from being read, edited, or accessed. These include the following:
- Making the PDF document read-only and lock PDF from editing
- Protecting the PDF with a password
When considering PDF security, it’s important to consider how to lock a PDF from editing or how to make a PDF read-only.
2. Encryption
Encrypting a document means that only a person with the required key can access the document. You can also encrypt the drive on which the document is kept.
To decrypt the file, you need the right key to access the text. Many cloud security providers offer encryption services for the documents that you store or access on the cloud.
3. Watermarking
A person or business can watermark a document with a brand logo or a labeled image so that it is clear that the text belongs to them.
This helps prevent people from copying or sharing text in an unauthorized manner and improves document security. It also ensures that the document is not shared or distributed by a person falsely claiming to be the content owner.
4. Password Protection
Password protection is another way to secure a document. This requires a password to open and access the document. It prevents it from being accessed by an unauthorized person.
It is important to find a way to store, share and regularly change passwords to ensure the security of any password used. It can be kept on a shared server that is only accessible to people who need to know the passwords.
To safeguard PDF security, various measures are available, like software to password-protect Adobe PDFs. These make it more difficult for an unauthorized user to crack a PDF password.
5. Digital Rights Management
Digital Rights Management refers to technology that safeguards content published online to protect intellectual property rights like copyrights.
It can help secure an eBook PDF or other available digital documents and prevent the material from being wrongfully accessed or misused. DRM can help protect digital documents in the following ways:
- It can restrict the distribution, download, and upload of the document as well as accessing and borrowing it.
- It can control how many devices a person can download the document onto.
- It can restrict or prevent the copy-paste function from being used on a document.
6. Information Rights Protection
Information rights protection helps safeguard sensitive or confidential information. It could include measures that:
- Control how the documents are used or processed, even after they have been sent to another organization or company.
- Prevent unauthorized users (that enter a network) from accessing the document through document permissions and authentication by an Information Rights Management server.
- Restrict users from editing the document by making it read-only.
7. Document Tracking and Elimination
A document tracker lets you track your document so that you know when it is read, downloaded, and printed and by whom.
It may also enable you to access important details like the location of a user, their IP address, and how often they access the document. However, this would depend on the specific document security option you choose.
Another important factor in safeguarding your documents is to ensure that they are deleted or expire when they are no longer required. You can confirm this by regularly deleting old documents.
Document security tools also include features for automatic document expiry so that they can only be accessed for a certain period.
Conclusion
Document security is an integral factor of digital hygiene and safe practices. It is particularly essential if you are publishing content online. DRM can play an important role in safeguarding documents that you publish and also ensuring the secure delivery of the content.
KITABOO offers DRM protection to keep your content safe from unauthorized or illegal use or download. DRM-protected content can only be accessed with unique access codes. You can ensure the secure delivery of your content across platforms and devices with KITABOO’s DRM-encrypted content. To know more, write to us at KITABOO@hurix.com
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