Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard

Securing PDFs in FIPS mode (Windows)

Version 8.1 of Acrobat and Reader provides a FIPS mode to restrict data protection to Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 approved algorithms using the RSA BSAFE Crypto-C 2.1 encryption module.

The following options aren’t available in FIPS mode:

  • Applying password-based security policies to documents. You can use public key certificates or Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server to secure the document, but you cannot use password encryption to secure the document.

  • Creating self-signed certificates. In FIPS mode, you cannot create self-signed certificates.

In FIPS mode, you can open and view documents that are protected with non-FIPS compliant algorithms, but you cannot save any changes to the document using password security. To apply security policies to the document, use either public key certificates or LiveCycle Policy Server.

Configure FIPS mode (Windows)

  1. Exit from Acrobat.
  2. Choose Start > Run, and then type regedit in the Open box.
  3. Navigate to the following key in the registry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER>SOFTWARE>Adobe>Adobe Acrobat>8.0>AVGeneral.
  4. Right-click AVGeneral, and then select New > DWORD Value.
  5. Change the name of the new value to bFIPSMode.
  6. In the right pane of the Registry Editor, double-click bFIPSMode.
  7. Set the value of bFIPSMode to 1 to enable or 0 to disable FIPS mode.