Duff Johnson’s PDF Perspective

Those who read my (too) frequent tirades knows that Adobe has to do a lot to impress me. In that spirit, I am VERY happy to report that Adobe has (finally) done something really smart in marketing a LiveCycle product; they’ve put a Policy Server online for anyone and everyone to try out at no charge - through the end of 2006, at least.

Simply put, Adobe’s new Document Center allows you to secure PDF (and now .doc and .xls!) files in meaningful and really useful ways. No dinky, readily cracked passwords here! With a couple of simple clicks at the Document Center, you can:

• Ensure only specific recipients can view a file (based on verified email address)
• Restrict printing or copying file contents, even with “authorized” recipients
• Set specific time-periods where access is or isn’t permitted
• Allow documents to work offline for a specific time-period before “calling home” to log offline access
• Cause PDF files to “embargo” themselves until a specific date and time
• Cause every copy of a document to “expire”, and (optionally) prompt the user to retrieve an updated file.

You’ll need Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional 7.05 or higher to access the Adobe Document Center, but users with Adobe Reader 7.0x or higher will be able to view your encrypted PDFs - if you’ve specifically allowed them to do so. You’ll also need a (free) Adobe ID, which is reasonably painless. NOTE: Your files are NOT uploaded to Adobe in the encryption process, so you need not worry that Adobe will suddenly know your secrets.

So, get over to dc.adobe.com at some point in the very near future. I guarantee you’ll be impressed as well. You may even be thinking “Wow, this is kind of crude, but now that I’ve seen it, I wonder if I could live without it? I suspect that’s the idea.

The Adobe Document Center is FREE right now, for a limited time only, at dc.adobe.com.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 11th, 2006 at 9:50 am and is filed under Little-known tricks, Adobe-Watching, In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.