Rights Management ensures that only authorized users can
use your documents. Using Rights Management, you can safely distribute
any information that you have saved in a supported format. Supported
file formats include:
Adobe PDF files
FLV and F4V files for Adobe Flash®
Microsoft® Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
files
Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC) Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire
4.0 files
For more information about how policies protect supported file
types, see Additional Rights Management Information.
Using Rights Management, you can easily create, store, and apply
predefined confidentiality settings to your documents. To prevent
information from spreading beyond your reach, you can also monitor
and control how recipients use your documents after you distribute
them.
You can protect documents by using policies. A policy is
a collection of information that includes confidentiality settings
and a list of authorized users. The confidentiality settings you
specify in a policy determine how a recipient can use a document
to which you apply the policy. For example, you can specify whether recipients
can print or copy text, edit text, or add signatures and comments
to protected documents.
Rights Management users create policies through the end-user
web pages. Administrators use the Rights Management web pages to
create policy sets that contain shared policies that are available
to all authorized users.
Although policies are stored in Rights Management, you apply
them to documents through your client application. How to apply
policies to PDF documents is described in detail in Acrobat Help.
Applying policies by using other applications, such as Microsoft
Office, is documented in the Rights Management Extension Help for
the application.
When you apply a policy to a document, the confidentiality settings
specified in the policy protect the information that the document
contains. The confidentiality settings also protect any files (text,
audio, or video) within a PDF document. You can distribute the policy-protected
document to recipients who are authorized by the policy.
Document access control and auditing
Using a policy to protect
a document gives you ongoing control over that document, even after
you distribute it. You can monitor the document, make changes to
the policy, prevent users from continuing to access the document, and
switch the policy that is applied to the document.
Through
Rights Management, you can monitor policy-protected documents and track
events, such as when an authorized or unauthorized user attempts
to open the document.
Components
Rights
Management consists of a server and user interface:
Server: The
central component through which Rights Management performs transactions
such as user authentication, real-time management of policies, and application
of confidentiality. The server also provides a central repository
for policies, audit records, and other related information.
Web pages: The
interface where you create policies, manage your policy-protected
documents, and monitor events that are associated with policy-protected
documents. Administrators can also configure global options such
as user authentication, auditing, and messaging for invited users,
and manage invited user accounts.
The steps in
the illustration are as follows:
The document owner
creates policies using the web pages. Document owners can create
personal policies that are accessible only to them. Administrators and
policy set coordinators can create shared policies within policy
sets that are accessible to authorized users.
The document owner applies the policy, and then saves and
distributes the document. The document can be distributed by email,
through a network folder, or on a website.
The recipient opens the document in the appropriate client
application. The recipient can use the document according to its
policy.
The document owner, policy set coordinator, or administrator
can track documents and modify access to them using the web pages.
