Protecting sensitive data is vitally important, but it is a process that has only grown more challenging in recent years. A complex threat environment combined with many possible avenues for reaching or stealing sensitive information means companies must think carefully about security. Simultaneously, the regulatory environment has undergone rapid changes, such as the introduction of GDPR in the EU. Despite these challenges, one simple tool can provide a great deal of support for privacy and compliance: a PDF editor.

With Tungsten Power PDF, you can easily equip your organization with a wide range of security and privacy-focused features for securing documents. With PDF being the dominant format for sharing many types of information, a solution that lets you fully prepare to implement better security is ideal. Take a moment to consider why this effort is so important, and see how Power PDF rises to the occasion.

What are the Consequences of Non-Compliance?

It takes time and effort to comply with privacy regulations and to implement best practices for document security within your organization. For some organizations, that might look like an opportunity to cut corners—but it's not worth any potential savings you might find. Failing to comply with regulations or simply mishandling sensitive data can lead to many problems, such as:

• Bad press or a bad reputation for how you handle consumer information.
• Litigation from individuals impacted by mishandled or leaked data.
• Regulatory warnings and hefty monetary fines, especially in GDPR territories.
• Threats to other business systems.

By choosing software that lets you protect documents correctly, you can mitigate many of these risks for greater peace of mind.

Power PDF: A robust solution for data privacy

In Power PDF, you'll find more than just an easy way to create, edit, and convert PDF files. It also has extensive data security built in and is just as intuitive as other tools. What can you do to lock down your documents?

Preventing unauthorized access is the first line of defense when keeping unwanted users from obtaining information in your business documents. With Power PDF, adding a strong password to any document is easy and takes only a few clicks. Setting a password requires any user who tries to open the document to provide that password—otherwise, it remains under digital lock and key.

Password-protecting documents is ideal in many scenarios, both for sharing and archiving documents. However, ensure you have a secure way to remember important passwords, such as a private, digital vault or other password keeper. As a best practice, avoid re-using the same password for many documents.

You may want to allow other users to open documents, but you might not want them to alter the information or create hard-copy versions through printing. With Power PDF, these highly specific edit permissions can also go under lockdown if you choose. Like adding a password, it takes only a few steps to incorporate this security element.

You could restrict editing by certain user classes, or you might only allow a user to fill out certain form fields for re-saving the document. These features are essential for in-house security when you need to be sure that employees cannot easily "go rogue" and steal or misuse sensitive documents.

Power PDF supports several forms of encryption when using passwords, but the strongest available today is the AES-256 encryption standard. When you apply this standard to your document, you can trust that no one can break through the encryption without knowing the password you've set. Brute-forcing AES-256 would take millions of years of computing time—something no common digital criminal could even consider trying.

At times, you may need to remove sensitive information from documents for sharing or because you do not need to retain such data in your archives. This could include names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and more. With Power PDF's built-in redaction tools, you can permanently obliterate and obscure that data with a simple search-and-redact feature. Be sure you retain an original version of the file if you need to maintain the unredacted text.

Take better security for a trial run today

From simple but strong password protection to redaction and more, you can take control of your document security today. By including a PDF editor in your choice of business software, building stronger and more compliant workflows is within easy reach. You can explore these opportunities for yourself, too. See what's possible when you download a free trial version of Power PDF to evaluate its security features today.