Adobe Digital Rights Management

Adobe Digital Rights Management & LiveCycle PDF DRM Security

Protect IP

Safeguard PDF Security protects PDF files without passwords:

Stop unauthorized access
Stop sharing and distribution
Strong US Gov strength encryption, DRM and licensing controls

Restrict Use

Set Expiry

Revoke Access

Watermark

Log Use

Comply Law

Benefits

Locklizard PDF DRM vs Adobe LiveCycle Digital Rights Management

Locklizard provides many security and cost advantages over Adobe Livecycle Rights Management ES2

No Insecure Passwords
Apart from the obvious problems that passwords can be given away, there are many PDF password recovery or cracking tools available on the Internet to remove passwords or reveal what they are. See Removing PDF Passwords.
The Locklizard approach is to license the relationship between the document publisher and customer, and automatically and transparently establish and verify authorizations on a document by document basis. No access control information travels with the documents, no passwords are given to users, and users have no means of entering passwords. Access control information is negotiated cryptographically and the user (or any other attacker) cannot become involved in the process or capture any secret information.
So the commonest methods of attacking protected PDF documents – through attacking passwords, have been prevented.
Offline Use
With Locklizard you can publish documents for offline use. DRM controls are part of the document so documents are persistently protected regardless of whether they connect to the Internet or not, or where they are located.
Users can use our offline zero installation USB solution (documents viewed directly from USB sticks) without having to connect to the Internet. USB sticks can be pre-loaded with a Viewer, documents, and keystore for total offline viewing. Documents are locked to the USB stick so they cannot be copied to other USB sticks or devices.
Location locking
Allow or prevent your documents from being opened in specific countries and locations (e.g. the office only).
You can apply this at both the global and user level so you can stop all company employees from accessing documents from unauthorized locations but enable a specific user to do so if they are travelling on business.
Safeguard automatically picks up the user’s location when they activate their license (and will automatically lock use to that location) so you don’t have to worry about entering this information.
Screen Grabber Protection
Our Screen Grabber protection prevents users using third party screen grabbing tools even from remote locations so you can prevent high quality screen grabs from being taken.
Cost Savings
With Safeguard document security you have unlimited users and documents so you always know what your costs will be. And we don’t tie you in to a yearly contract.
- No charges per document sold – just a one off fee for unlimited users and documents.
- No subscription charges for perpetual licenses – just a one-time fee and a small yearly hosting charge if you use our servers to host your Safeguard Administration System.
- One-time fee for own server licenses. Pay just the once and host the system on your own server.

Locklizard takes your document security seriously. Sell or share PDF files securely without insecure passwords or plug-ins, and enforce access, location, expiry, and usage controls. Our DRM technology ensures your PDF files remain safe no matter where they reside with US Gov Strength encryption, licensing, and DRM controls. Document content is decrypted in memory and no temporary files are used.

Read our customer testimonials to see why companies choose Safeguard over Adobe Livecycle ES2 (cost, product reliability, features, and outstanding support are just some of the reasons). If you are looking for an alternative to Adobe Livecycle Rights Management then try our free 15 day Trial.

Adobe Rights Management server: Digital Rights Management for PDF documents & files

Adobe LiveCycle

Adobe LiveCycle consists of a series of products that seek to automate a number of business processes that interface with ‘customers’ who may be inside or outside the organization, leveraging existing Adobe PDF based technologies. For business process aficionados, LiveCycle starts with forms (including bar code handling) and data assurance, provides a business process ‘orchestration’ engine (complete with a workbench), and content management with collaboration support.

But if you are looking at Abobe LiveCycle as a Digital Rights Management (DRM) tool (either stand-alone or within the rather vaster architecture that Adobe LiveCycle brings with it), then you need to understand what is actually being managed by Adobe LiveCycle.

As the name suggests, AdobeLiveCycle is addressing the needs of an organization to gather and process data through the mediums of form-filling and printed/viewed results. Underpinning Adobe LiveCycle is the idea of controlled collaboration over both the forms and their attendant data, and the reporting and report distribution that are the obvious concomitant of the processing.

Whilst these functions provided by Adobe LiveCycle are important to the business processes of, say, capturing new customer information and automatically distributing it to all those areas of the corporation that might find that ‘interesting’ as a new sales target or opportunity, if is more difficult to see how the DRM controls match typical requirements in an information publishing environment where the recipients are not expected to be allowed to automatically process information.

So does Adobe LiveCycle provide the DRM controls that a book publisher might require, or the seller of private reports? Well, here the situation is more opaque.

Adobe Digital Rights Management

Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management ES2 provides some controls over sharing information, but a magazine or an ebook publisher is not sharing their information with you so much as showing it to you – just like a newspaper – you buy it to read it, not to copy it into your computer and then do analysis on it or ship it on to friends and family. So the controls may not be well aligned to the requirement.

Also, whilst Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management ES2 does allow offline use of information, special provision has to be made, and a special record has to be set up with an end date, otherwise every single collection of information (the word document springs to mind, but in the brave new world it is really just a bundle of information) has to talk to an appropriate server every time it is to be used.

That is because the security policies governing use of the document are held on the server and not stored as part of the document itself. A publisher could therefore not use Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management ES2 to protect an ebook if they wanted the user to view the ebook without having to permanently connect to a LiveCycle Rights Management ES server every time to view it.

With Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management ES2 you can control printing but that is limited to prevent or allow, but does not limit the number of copies. Controls allow for, copying content, form filling, dynamic watermarks, digital signature use, screen reader access, review and comment use, page insertion, deletion, rotation. You can control online and offline access, establish time controls for access (document lifecycle control), change usage or revoke rights after distribution and audit document usage.

You cannot, however, prevent screen grabbers from taking screen shots of sensitive documents, or prevent use in thin client/virtual environments (so once one person has authenticated, everyone in the company or external parties who have been given access to the virtual environment can view it).

Adobe Rights Management and offline access

Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management ES2 does have a feature for allowing documents to be used offline, but this must be setup as a limited ‘lease’ on the server for transfer to the client.

Because the document controls are held on the server and not in the document itself, letting a user view a document offline turns out not to be a very clever idea. Curiously, Adobe state in their own documentation about giving an employee offline use for 3 days, “Yet it helps ensure that if they share a protected document with an unauthorized user, it will automatically be unusable after three days of separation from the corporate network.” Presumably, in other words, there is NO security during these 3 days since the only control preventing accessing the document is a username and password, which can be shared. Adobe recommend smartcard authentication as a solution… Perhaps that’s why publishers are not buying into it?

Now this may not bother the corporate world, where everyone is always connected together, and everything is always on (we are assuming here that servers never fail because if they do since access is approved in real-time you will not be able to view your protected documents). So that is likely the target market for Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management, the corporate ‘publishing’ and corporate internal control system. And there is nothing wrong with that at all. It is a market that urgently needs to provide some very convincing answers as to how it protects PII (Personally Identifiable Information) if you are in the USA or personal data if you are in Europe (and yes, you guessed it, the rules are not identical).

Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management is something that offers some opportunities to show that access to, and sending on of data from within the organization can be restricted. And that could be a very important statement to make.

Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management however seems less useful for the corporate executive who either cannot open documents whilst on the plane or traveling (unless they have the lower control documents which are now easier to steal or give away).

But Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management does not act to bridge the gap between the internal organizational controls of the corporate, and the disparate third parties who often form the recipients of controlled information. And here the list becomes near endless. Controlling the ability of recipients to save, copy, print, screen grab, and scan without any detection is a much more difficult task than controlling internally held and processed information.

So Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management ES2 can be a very valuable architecture and toolset allowing corporations to architect the processes that interface with web based recipients and share information internally. But more specialist suppliers are needed when you need to approach DRM controls for information that is to be distributed to the wider audience.

Digital Rights Management Software for Adobe PDF Documents

Adobe Rights Management competitor analysis – Adobe or Locklizard PDF DRM Security?

Safeguard PDF Security and Enterprise PDF Security provide PDF rights management, protecting PDF documents and files against unauthorized use and misuse both inside and outside the enterprise. They also provide persistent offline protection for publishers selling PDF content – PDF ebooks, reports, etc. without the use of passwords.

How does Safeguard PDF Security compares to Adobe Digital Rights Management? see the Safeguard vs Adobe Livecycle ES2 competitor analysis below.

Customer Testimonials

We needed to deliver e-book versions of our handbooks while not compromising on security and digital rights. Safeguard PDF security is easy to use and intuitive.

The implementation was painless and we now have a greener, more secure way of distributing training manuals.
Locklizard’s PDF protection is exactly as described – the features are highly effective and I would give it 5 stars.

I would recommend Locklizard to others - their security is simple to use and fit for purpose. It meets common needs of businesses who have information they want to protect.
We would be happy to recommend Locklizard to any company needing a flexible way to secure PDF files.

Safeguard PDF Security has provided us with a very workable solution for sharing of information in a secure fashion. The support has been excellent and very accommodating.
We can cut accounts for a user five minutes before his class starts and he is ready to go. Happy smiling customer, while we still have security and personalized watermarking.

I have immense respect for the product and Locklizard provide great customer satisfaction and service.
We would recommend Safeguard to other companies for its security, cost and ease of use. It does what we expected it to do and more.

Ease of use is a bonus and the implementation was very easy. The product manual is excellent and Locklizard staff are very accommodating.
We sell a highly valued educational product in an open and competitive market so it was important to ensure we had effective security to protect our digital rights.

We highly recommend Locklizard - a professional company with a competitive and professional PDF Security product.
We would absolutely recommend both Locklizard as a company, and Safeguard PDF Security. It has transformed our study materials to the next level.

Not only did this increase sales, but we also believe that it has increased our customers’ ability to learn, which is even more important!
We would recommend Locklizard Safeguard to other companies that need to protect PDF reports. Customers have found the process of accessing the protected documents to be seamless.

Implementation was easy and technical support has been very responsive to requests for help.
Our company would without reservation recommend Locklizard. Their document DRM software opens up delivery of our new products in a timely fashion while knowing that the content will remain secure.

The return on investment to our company has been immediately evident.
We use Safeguard to make sure that documents cannot be opened outside our local network or from a unauthorized computer in order to copy or print the documents.

It is the most feature rich, affordable, & simple to use PDF security product on the market.
Safeguard PDF Security is simple to administer and meets our needs, consistently delivering secured manuals to our customers with ease.

Return on investment has been elimination of many man hours, printing resources and postage – it is estimated that costs decreased by 50% or more.
We would really recommend Safeguard PDF Security to every publishing company for managing ePubs or e-books securely. It is easy to secure PDF files and simple to distribute them to our authorized customers only.

Locklizard also provides a good customer support experience.
The ROI for us is incalculable. We have the security of knowing that our proprietary documents are secure. This is the entire value of our company.

I would most certainly recommend your PDF security product and already have. The ease of implementation was surprising.
We can now sell our manuals without the need to print them first, saving time, money and helping safeguard the environment.

We would recommend Safeguard PDF DRM – it is the perfect solution to sell and send e-documents securely whilst making sure someone cannot copy them.
We would recommend Locklizard to other companies without hesitation.

Their PDF DRM products provide a manageable, cost effective way to protect intellectual investment and they are always looking for ways to improve them. Moreover, their staff provide an excellent level of support.