How to Protect PDF Today Blog

Ebooks have become a popular way for people to make money online. A lot of folks will set up niche websites that offer a related ebook for sale or they might just write several ebooks and place them up for sale on Clickbank for others to promote. The bad news is that the illegal copying of ebooks is increasing at a rapid rate. It’s not fair to you if you’ve put all the work into an ebook, then offer it for sale and have others that steal your work. There are some ways to help protect the security of your eBook to make sure it only gets into the hands of paying consumers.

While you can assume that most internet users are honest people, but there are always others that need to try and get everything for free. One easy way to prevent ebook theft is by registering for a copyright. Although your published work is automatically copyrighted, it doesn’t hurt to register copyright.

Another way that you can protect ebook security and digital security of PDFs is by requiring a password for users to actually open the ebook. You could make the ebook downloadable for them once they purchase it, but then they won’t be able to see anything until they type in a valid password. This can really help to cut down on stealing.

You can also format your ebook with a specific HTML command that will prevent your ebook from being indexed by the search engines. If you sell an ebook and don’t require a password, any body typing in a phrase related to your ebook might be able to find it in search results and read it for free.

Finally, you can choose to have a setting that prevents readers from being able to print out your ebook. If they are able to print it, they could easily sell it themselves or even rewrite the book in a different program and sell it as their own.

It takes a bit of hard work to write and publish your own ebook so you should do all you can to protect it. There will always be dishonest people in the world, but you can try a few of the above tips to help prevent them from stealing your work. With this problem being on the rise, it’s important to stay up to date on all of the things you can do to help protect the digital security of PDFs.

The development of IT (Information Technologies) has introduced considerable awareness of PDF security needs.

Taking care of and protecting your information has always been essential, but is even more critical now. There are several PDF security programs introduced to safeguard document files in electronic format. Portable Document Format is one of these utilities. Introduced in 1993 by Adobe Systems, PDF embeds protection features to protect the subject matter of a file from an unauthorized end user.

A PDF producer can encrypt their Portable Document Format file for protection or digitally signing meant for authentication. The conventional security provided by Acrobat PDF features two different passwords. These types of passwords are “user password” or “open password” as well as “owner password” or “permission password.”

If your PDF applies “user password” or “open password” a individual must type in the right password in the Password dialog box. This allows a user to print, look at or duplicate the content. In case if “owner password” or “permission password” is employed the PDF file will not prompt a user to enter any kind of password.

Then again, a user cannot print a page unless you allow them to (in theory – although there are many ways around this unless you apply additional PDF security methods). Also, individuals can’t choose and copy the content of a file to work with elsewhere. An additional feature which PDF supports with a “permission password” is that your document may be read employing a display reader. A display screen reader is used by visually impaired folks. and is dependent upon a PDF creator choosing the particular degree of security that he or she desires to use prior to using the Adobe PDF distiller.

A Portable Document Format is often digitally signed for authentication. An individual may embed a visible rendering of the digital signatures in a Pdf document file. A man or woman might select the location of signature in a document with references to place and area on a article. It’s possible to encrypt the PDF documents deploying password of users’ choice for keeping privacy.

The encrypted documents usually do not require any other computer software for decryption. A user can tie a PDF file in the policy host and a particular policy. This valuable method of PDF security is essential if you wish to apply PDF protection to a file. In different terms, it deals with the documents which are otherwise prone to illegal viewing or modifying.

You will find various means to take full advantage of the protection of your PDF files. A PDF document (with appropriate security) can protect your valuabler subject matter from almost any intruder into your knowledge or subject matter. When you decide to use correct PDF security and protection methods your information will be quite secure.

As we enter 2010, PDF publishers must be more careful than ever to protect their PDFs with PDF security.

The number of security threats hackers, or employees intent on harming your business, can insert into PDF documents with your name on them are becoming more numerous every day. For example;

Security Holes in PDF files Exploited by Hackers

The latest Sophos Security Threat report tells us; “Instead of simply looking for operating system and browser vulnerabilities to exploit, hackers are also exploring security holes in other widely used programs and tools such as Adobe Flash and PDFs.

The rise in malicious Flash and PDF files can be partly explained by the use of malware construction kits that build web attack pages incorporating booby-trapped code. The inclusion of the Flash and PDF content targets vulnerabilities that have been found in the widely used Adobe browser plug-ins, underlining the importance of keeping these up to date.”

Mobile Devices Targeted by PDF Security Threats

Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion recently reports; “ Multiple security vulnerabilities exist in the PDF distiller of some released versions of the BlackBerry Attachment Service. These vulnerabilities could enable a malicious individual to send an email message containing a specially crafted PDF file, which when opened for viewing on a BlackBerry smartphone, could cause memory corruption and possibly lead to arbitrary code execution on the computer that hosts the BlackBerry Attachment Service.”

Resolution

“Research In Motion (RIM) has issued an interim security software update that resolves this vulnerability in affected versions of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry Professional Software. Download and install Interim Security Update 2 for the software version that you are running.”

Hackers are finding increasingly inventive ways of exploiting holes in Acrobat

ITExpertMag reports; “The same rich content that makes PDF so useful to businesses can also make it a security risk. Embedding links, images, tables and media uses JavaScript and that allows PDF files to be exploited as an attack vector for hackers.

Although security software can scan for malicious code placed directly in the document, there are increasingly complex ways of obfuscating the code to hide the payload from scanners.

The usual defences of keeping browsers, security software and the Adobe Reader software itself up to date offer some protection. Adobe has released an update to address the specific vulnerability that was discovered and you should make sure all users have this.

You could disable the Adobe Reader browser plug-in but this will be so inconvenient for users that it’s not worth doing unless another vulnerability is discovered and you’re waiting for a security update. In Internet Explorer this can be done through the Tools > Manage Add-ons option and in Firefox this can be found under the Applications tab accessed via Tools > Options.

A better solution is JavaScript filtering in the firewall or on a security appliance, although you’ll need to set this up carefully to avoid problems on JavaScript-heavy Web sites, and you may need a procedure for unblocking PDFs with embedded content that users need to work with.

In the end, common sense and education are the best weapons. PDFs have to be specially created to exploit this vulnerability. Make users aware that there is a slight risk with PDF files and that they should treat emailed PDF documents they didn’t request with the same caution they use for other potential threats in email and attachments.”

Solutions

Whenever you produce a PDF, add security to it, and not just a password (which can be easily broken). Adding a protective shell and user access control will be even more essential in 2010 than previous years.

When creating a PDF eBook, you need to be careful that PDF security concerns are adequately addressed.

Many eBook authors and producers today neglect to protect their PDF in a thorough manner, and end up regretting their PDF security decision later. Because in a few short weeks, hundreds, if not thousand of unauthorized copies of their PDF are sure to become available online.

How do PDF thieves manage to get around the PDF protection many eBook authors choose to use? The primary method most PDF authors use is the password method. That is, a special password they send to authorised users of the PDF file by email. Together with instructions to use this password to enable opening of the PDF file, this goes a small way toward preventing massive copying.

But the PDF password method to open a PDF file alone, can never be very effective, for the simple reason that the password can be easily passed along with the PDF file itself. As part of a single zip file, attached to the PDF file.

This is the main weakness in PDF security using a password, alone. It’s too easy for others to pass around.
What other solutions are there? Adobe Acrobat does have other, more complex PDF security methods, but they are quite complex. And Adobe Acrobat is not a cheap program to buy in the first place.

A number of alternate, more secure PDF protection methods are available that not only place a protective shell around your PDF document, they also offer real-time monitoring of who is opening your PDF file and how often.

This is offers much greater security because not only do you know that your PDF file has been opened, you can also withdraw user access to your PDF files at any time you want.

If you have a question about how enhanced PDF protection and security systems like these work, please take a look at these Frequently Asked PDF Security Questions.