Adobe Password Encryption Security

[JasonWhiting]

I work at a financial institution. We frequently use Adobe products to password protect and encrypt sensitive documents before emailing them out. Our CEO attempted to password protect a document and got a warning that stated "All Adobe products enforce the restrictions set by the Permissions Password. However, not all third-party products fully support and respect these settings. Recipients using such third-party products might be able to bypass some of the restrictions you have set." This concerned him a great deal, leading him to believe our method of encrypting and password protecting documents is faulty.

I have looked into this some myself since he raised concerns. As far as I can tell, password protecting a PDF using Adobe and setting the encryption algorithm to 256 AES is reasonably secure. Any password dependant security feature will be subjust to some risk, and that is why strong passwords are recommended. 

Are there easy to use programs that bypass Adobe encryption entirely? How secure is password protecting a PDF using an Adobe product? Should an alternative method of document security be used instead of relying on the built in features found in Adobe?

[try67]

> Are there easy to use programs that bypass Adobe encryption entirely?

- Yes. The concern is valid, as the message states.

> Should an alternative method of document security be used instead of relying on the built in features found in Adobe?

- The most secure way of protecting the file is to apply both a File Edit and a File Open password (not the same one!), and then share the latter with the people who are going to open it. This will encrypt the file's entire contents and will make it more difficult, although not impossible, to get around it. Anyone willing enough would still be able to do it, either directly or indirectly (for example, you could take screenshots of each page and create a new file, without any security policy on it).

[try67]

I forgot to mention another option, which is to protect the file using DRM technology. That is very safe, but also very expensive. And it still doesn't solve the screenshots-workaround, for example.