5 Ways to Secure a PDF
Don’t let your sensitive info get into the wrong hands.
In today’s sophisticated digital world, PDF documents can be easily leaked, altered, or otherwise tampered with if you don’t secure them properly. PDF security is crucial if you don’t want your sensitive information to get breached or compromised. Here are the best ways to make sure your PDF documents are locked down and safe from dangerous security threats.
1. Add a watermark
Watermarking a PDF adds a text “stamp” onto your document, so it cannot be edited. The text can say anything you want it to, but some common examples are “confidential” or “do not alter.” To make sure the watermark you add to your PDF is the most secure it can be, it’s recommended that you add it directly to the page content. This method thoroughly “bakes” a watermark into the PDF document and is the strongest form of watermark security.
2. Add password protection
By password protecting a PDF, you have control over who can access your files because only authorized recipients who have the password can open the document. Even if you accidentally distribute the file by mistake, it will not be opened because the recipient(s) will not have the correct password and will be locked out of the document.
The main form of password-protected security for a PDF is encryption. Encryption is the process of converting information or data into a code that hides the information’s true meaning. By adding encryption to a PDF, it secures the information by converting it to code and then adds a password which “decrypts” the code upon opening the document.
3. Redact sensitive information
Redaction is the removal of certain sensitive or classified content from a document in order to distribute it with that content eliminated. It is not enough to use an editor to draw a black line or black box over a few sentences in a PDF document and then save the file. The content is still there, underneath. This means anyone with access to the document can copy the text you “redacted,” paste it into another document, and read it there instead.
When a PDF document is redacted properly, however, the sensitive information that you highlight is completely removed from the page. A black box appears in the place where the erased content used to be.
To learn how NOT to add redaction to your PDF, check out PDF Redactions Fails and How to Avoid Them.
4. Sanitize the PDF
PDF sanitization ensures that only the intended information can be accessed from a document. The PDF sanitization process will strip away everything but the content of your document, including metadata, embedded content, attached files, scripts, hidden layers, embedded search indexes, stored form data, review and comment data, hidden data from previously saved versions, obscured text and images, comments hidden within the body of the PDF file.
5. Set unique PDF permissions
Setting unique PDF permissions can help determine and regulate how the document is accessed and how users can interact with the file. Permission levels are designed to add security and control of PDF files you create, and only an administrator of the PDF can add or remove those permissions. The most common permission settings are usually related to editing, copying, printing, or otherwise interacting with the file.
So, there you have it, five tips to properly secure your PDF files. We hope these tips will help you maintain security with your PDFs and prevent your documents from getting into the wrong hands, which can be detrimental to your business or personal life.
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