Office Tweaks

Digital Signature & File Encryption made easy!

by Jerome Locson on November 22nd, 2007

I had this meeting with a local writers group here in the city. I presented the web project to him and gone through the details of its features and functionalities. He pointed me out that the site’s purpose is to make some sort of a promotional media to showcase their works. He told me that he has Ebay and Amazon accounts, selling their books online. He then asked how possible is it to have an ebook sold having the security he needs (e.g. when one buys an ebook, he/she cannot redistribute and print it anytime). So, it made me think of some solutions to his demand.

So, first I suggested about encryption of the file (some sort of a digital signature). He asked of how reliable and how much would it cost him to implement such. Of course, I did not gave a specific amount because I did not know yet any softwares to do such.

I suddenly recalled the software I used to print documents as PDF. I downloaded this printer driver to directly print PDFs. I recalled the software because I noticed onetime that they also have this Signature995 software that can do encryption and having digital signatures on files, not only on PDFs.  And I downloaded the tools and tried to do some signing files and encrypting as well.  Signature995 is free to both the sender and the recipient. Here’s its features and details:

Signature995 uses native PDF encryption, offering a high level of protection for all your Internet communications, including legal documents and financial transactions. Signature995 employs Microsoft digital certificate technologies to create and validate digital signatures. It is both powerful and easy to use. Signature995 supports PDF documents (*.pdf), Microsoft Office documents (*.doc, *.xls, *.ppt) and Zip archives (*.zip) and UltraPdf documents (*.updf).

Encryption
Generates a key from your password to encrypt PDF documents (*.pdf), Microsoft Office documents (*.doc, *.xls, *.ppt) and Zip archives (*.zip). The encrypted file is placed in the same folder as the original document. It has the double file extension ‘.encrypt.995.’

Decryption
Decrypts PDF documents, Microsoft Office documents and Zip Archives encrypted with Signature995 if the correct password is supplied. The unencrypted document is placed in the same folder as the encrypted file. It has the additional file extension ‘pdf’, ‘doc’, ‘xls’, ‘ppt’ or ‘zip.’

Sign
Uses your digital certificate to sign a PDF document, Office Document or Zip Archive. If “SecureSign” is checked, the signed document will also be encrypted. The signed file is placed in the same folder as the original document. It has the double extension ’signed.995′ or ’securesigned.995.’

Co-sign
Uses your digital certificate to add a signature to a signed or SecureSigned (requires the document’s password) document.

Verify
Verifies signatures and displays the Certificates of a signed or SecureSigned (requires the document’s password) document.

I hope this tool will help you in sharing secured files by using the technologies of digital signatures and file encryptions.

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POSTED IN: File Formats, General, Productivity, adobe