Protecting confidential documents is critical to your ability to develop the right products, deliver efficient services and gain revenue and profits. But, unfortunately, there is an entire industry of criminal activities and hackers who are looking to wrongfully grab, misuse and reveal your valuable data to cause you considerable impairment by damaging or obliterating the value of your information. 

Addressing safety with your valuable data can feel like a mammoth task, but even a tiny step could help prevent a disastrous downfall for your company. For instance, according to the Forbes Tech Council report in 2019, the average cost of a single data breach was approximately $8.19 million.

To avoid transferring the information of your valuable contents to parties or individuals not authorized to view that information is crucial now more than ever. However, protecting your company's confidential documents and data is an increasingly complicated task as technology evolves and the modern business environment continues to change shape. 

If you're looking to protect your classified data and confidential documents, you may have come across some popular security measures. These are:

• Labeling confidential information appropriately. In several cases, legal protections only exist if you treat data as classified or valuable. But labelling your data as confidential is not the solution to protecting your documents. It can work as an incentive for a miscreant to steal or make improper use of the data.
• Implementing digital archival ensures long-term secure storage and preservation of important files, allowing you to manage, retrieve, and protect sensitive data even over extended periods. Moreover, digital archival reduces the risk of data loss or corruption, ensuring that vital information remains intact and available for future use.
• Including nondisclosure provisions. You can also safeguard valuable information by ensuring that all-important information includes a nondisclosure provision. Every user who needs access to sensitive data must be required to sign NDA contracts. However, suppose a user is no longer in a business relationship with you. In that case, they could spill the details of the contents anonymously to other parties without involving their name or credentials. This makes NDA provisions a not-so-safe and non-guaranteed document security solution.
• Limiting access through passwords. Most organizations shield their valuable business data by restricting access through password protection. This means, only users who need to access confidential information must have the password to open and view the data. However, passwords can easily be shared or bypassed and broken into with the help of simple and easy to break into password removal applications.
• Securing computers and networks. Online security is crucial in today's climate. Investing in firewalls and antivirus software provides the first level of protection against hackers from infecting your system. However, when sending sensitive data through PDF documents, data can be easily intercepted if not adequately encrypted. Having the correct document security solution protecting your confidential papers and that is present at every stage of your PDF lifecycle is more important than securing only the terminals or the hardware.
• Implementing company-wide policies on security. Several organizations have clear guidelines on how confidential documents must be shared within and outside the company. These include the do's and don'ts when handling classified valuable data, especially when working remotely and variable data printing software. But even though specific security measures are followed, ensuring the safety of confidential documents may not always be assured.
• Employing digital rights management tools. The only proven way of protecting the security of your confidential documents is through using a rights management tool. Through DRM, you can limit privileged data access for specific people only. If that's not enough, you can also retract or revoke access even after the PDF file has been shared. PDF DRM tools eliminate the risk of content leakage that could be detrimental to your business. Typically, DRM tools offer complete control over who can access, print or download your information. The right PDF DRM solution will also provide screenshot protection and apply dynamic watermarks to your PDF files.

DRM: The only proven way to protect your confidential documents securely

PDF DRM can track the activities of your valuable data and provide you with in-depth insight on how your PDF files are being viewed or accessed. It's time to take advantage of the robust features provided by the right PDF DRM solution to track and know what takes place with your documents. Through its activity logs and statistics, you will be able to observe and track user activities as well as perform forensics on who has accessed information and when. Besides, you'll also be able to monitor any suspicious activity, such as unauthorized access or sharing of your valuable documents and data.

Conclusion

Acclimate to the new method of working by implementing PDF DRM today. Maintaining document security is imperative in today's business environment. Knowing the best practices on protecting your confidential documents through PDF DRM can eliminate the chances of a data breach. You can store and share confidential data even when working remotely. In addition, PDF DRM controls your documents with comprehensive rights management and advanced protection features that enable you to track, watermark, expire, revoke and lock access to devices and locations. Make sure you strengthen your document security through every stage of your PDF document lifecycle with PDF DRM.