Protector™ add-in for MS Office (PaM™)

Overview of PaM - Protector add-in for MS Office

Document authors control who can access a document and whether or not they may edit all or part of it. Documents can be delivered to the recipients) using any normal method – for example by e-mail, via a network, or on disk.

User-friendly interfaces allow non-technical staff to set, view and/or modify access and usage rights and monitor use easily and efficiently, offering senior staff convenience and privacy if they wish to monitor and control rights directly rather than through IT staff.

Key Benefits

• Ensure confidentiality of both work in progress and completed documentation.

• Secure and speed up collaboration and review processes, while continuing to benefit from the functionality and convenience of the usual MS Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook), and e-mail.

• Make sensitive information available only to those who need it, and, if required, only at times when they need it:
  • Allow specific users immediate access to the documents they need, while ensuring that they do not pass documents or their contents to unauthorized parties - even those that they are authorized to edit.

  • Ensure that out of date information can no longer be used and that information to be released in future cannot be accessed until its release date.

  • Make it so easy and convenient for your people to work securely that they have no reason not to:

  • Document authors set access and usage rights and share work with authorized recipients in the same way as usual, without hassle or delay.

• Rights can be updated simply and efficiently through the user-friendly RightsServer interface.  

• Keep track of document use and user behavior .

• Implement easily and economically. Simple, efficient administration. 

• Increase others’ confidence in your organization by demonstrating your fulfillment of your duty to keep clients’ or partners’ information secure, during and after the period of a contract, ensuring that confidential information:
  • is not used out of context;

  • is not re-used in other projects;

  • is not taken on to other companies by past employees or contractors;

  • is not left sitting on employees’ hard drives to be discovered and potentially misused later;

  • is not passed on to competitors or other third parties.

Protector add-in for MS Office

Learning about PaM with RightsServer™

User Instructions

Creating a Secure Document or Securing an Existing Document:

Use Word as normal to create and edit you document,

but instead of using File>Save or Save As, or the save icon, use File>Secure Save or Secure Save As, or the secure save icon.



The first time you use a secure save, your computer will connect to the PaM RightsServer




and the PaM RightsServer Login panel will appear.

Enter your user name and password in the bottom left corner of the PaM RightsServer Login panel and click Login (if you have already logged in to the PaM RightsServer you will not need to enter your user name and password again unless the connection has broken). The User Groups and Users will appear in the top section of the control panel.

When the box heading has changed to Set Permissions, double click on each user group and/or user that you wish to be able to see or use the document. These will then be listed in the lower section of the Set Permissions panel.

In the lower section, click in the appropriate columns opposite each user or group to add or remove permissions for that user or group:

Use No Access to prevent a particular user from accessing a document to which the rest of his user group has been assigned permissions. Users and groups for whom no permissions are assigned will automatically be assigned no access, so this may not need to be used.
Use View to allow a user or group to view the document without being able to save, save as, print, capture or extract content from it.
Use View and Print if you want them to be able to print it. (See note below on printing.)
Use Save to allow a user or group to make and save changes to the document, either as the same document or as a new secure document using Secure Save As, without being able to print, capture or extract the content, and without being able to save unprotected.
Use Save and Print if you want them to be able to print either your original document or their modified version of it. (See note below on printing.)

Use Start Time and/or End Time if you want to allow the permissions you have selected for that user or group to apply only after or before a certain time, or between two times. NB If you are running this using the demo server this uses the server time which is currently UTC - 9.
 

Note on Printing:
Allowing printing is not recommended unless the benefits outweigh the risk of this feature being used to create an unprotected document, e.g. by scanning the printed document and using text recognition software to create an unprotected electronic document from it or by printing to a file which can be used to create an unprotected document.

After selecting the permissions, click OK in the bottom right corner of the Set Permissions panel.

The Secure Save screen will appear. Select the directory on your computer where you wish to save the secure document and enter the document name, then click Save.

The progress bar in the bottom right corner of the control panel will move across. This may take several seconds, after which a message will appear to confirm that the document has been saved with the assigned permissions.
Click OK.

Continue to work on the document as normal, using File>Secure Save or Secure Save As, or the secure save icon to save changes. If Secure Save As is used by the document creator, new permissions may be assigned. If Secure Save or the secure save icon are used, the permissions will remain the same.

See 'Changing Permissions' below for instructions for the author or administrator to change permissions later.


Preventing the document contents from being modified on screen during viewing:

Users without save permissions cannot save any changes made to the document contents, but you may wish to prevent them from making any temporary changes on their screen, especially if you are allowing printing. To do this, lock the contents using Tools>Protect Document, selecting Forms and entering a password known only to you. Do this before your final Secure Save of the document.

An upgrade is planned to allow document contents to be locked securely without use of a password, with unlock permissions set using the RightsServer.

Allowing users with save permissions to edit any part of the document and save their changes:
If you have locked the document contents as above to prevent view-only users from making temporary on-screen changes, either give the un-lock password to users with save permissions, or, if you prefer not to give the user(s) a password, use Secure Save As and Tools>Unprotect Document to create a version of the document which users with save permissions can edit without having to enter a password.
If there are no users with view-only permissions to the document, simply set permissions and make your final Secure Save without locking the contents.

Allowing users with save permissions to edit only some sections of the document while others remain locked:
Insert section breaks to distinguish sections which you wish to be locked from those which you wish to be editable by users with save permissions. Before making your final Secure Save, lock the required sections using Tools>Protect Document>Forms>
Sections, checking the sections to be locked and entering a password.

Changing Permissions:
Document creators may view and change permissions for any secure document they have created at any time using File>Administration.
Administrators may also view and change permissions for secure documents created by users in their user groups, as well as by themselves, using File>Administration.

Click File>Administration
Log in if prompted. (If you are already logged in this will not be necessary.)

Under the My Secure Documents tab, you will see a list of the secure documents you have created. You may sort these by name or by date by clicking Document Name or Date Created.
To view the permissions currently assigned for that document, double click a document name. The Set Permissions panel will appear.
If you do not wish to make any changes, click Cancel.

If you wish to modify, revoke or add permissions, use the Set Permissions panel as usual and then click OK.

To completely withdraw a document, double click each of the users or user groups listed to withdraw their permissions.

To find a particular user or user group to whom you have assigned permissions for one or more documents, click the My Recipients tab.

Double click a user or group name to see a list of all documents for which that user or group has permissions.

Double click the document name to bring up the Set Permissions panel for that document.

Use the Set Permissions panel as usual.
Double click the arrow below the Document Name heading to return from the document list to the recipients list.


Distributing Secure Documents:
Secure documents can be distributed in the same ways as normal documents, e.g by email attachment, on disk, by placing on a network.


Opening Secure Documents:
Currently secure documents are opened using File>Secure Open or the secure open icon. (A forthcoming upgrade will allow secure documents to be opened without using the File menu, e.g. by double-clicking the file.)
On clicking Secure Open, if the user is not already logged in to the PaM RightsServer, the login box will appear. Once logged in, the Look In screen appears for the user to select and open the required document. The document then opens according to the permissions assigned to the user or his/her user group.

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