Secure Adobe PDF Viewer and Digital Rights Management

What is digital rights management (DRM) in relation to PDF documents protection? This is a question asked by many authors and publishers. DRM can be explained as the controls that authors implement over their work in order to regulate what the purchasers of the documents can do with them. It mainly revolves around inhibiting computer functions such as unauthorized viewing, editing, copying, printing, or even sharing the information with other people. These functions may be present with PDF document viewing applications (mainly adobe) but functionality is protected using passwords which are not secure. What is needed is a secure adobe PDF document viewer working as a standalone application, but for which the author has control over its functions, and can implement the DRM functions that required. Such a security viewer can then be used as the tool for checking if the user is licensed to use the secure adobe PDF document and whether his/her permit is valid. It will work to give authors exclusive DRM control over their creative with the help of settings that are transparent to users or the viewer application creator. The functions of the secure viewer can therefore be used to answer the question what is digital right management. However, in view of the risks of hacker attacks the viewer should be created with the inclusion of some measures that will discourage its being compromised. Top on the list is that it should not allow JavaScript as this is the easiest channel for hacker attacks, nor should it make use of or allow the loading of plug-ins as they are prone to failure and conflicts. It should not be affected by Adobe Acrobat and its updates, nor should it use password based encryption as passwords are easily broken. It should in effect decrypt documents on the fly in memory only so that no files will be saved to disk or windows swap file. More refined controls are desired of a secure document viewer, after all what is digital rights management if we only prohibit the viewing, copying, and printing or sharing functions? What about protection over screen grab and screenshots? An ideal secure viewer should be able to connect with the author’s server to verify licenses and to control the number of times that the user can view the secure adobe PDF document or withhold document access after a specified date is reached. Other than just withholding printing, the secure viewer should be able to control the number of copies that can be made and even include a watermarking feature which will identify the name, company, date/time stamp or email address of the document user. The secure adobe PDF document viewer should also control the viewing of the protected document in a virtual or thin client environment, and on one or more computers. All these capabilities that we seek in a secure viewer should be able to effectively answer the question what is digital rights management and all what it entails. Blog Url:-http://locklizard.blogspot.com