It is not unusual for companies to have a need to share sensitive documents either with employees or external companies / partners. Even if the link sharing is ultra secure, once the document is available outside of the security of the company perimeter all control of the document has vanished.
This is where the Enterprise File Fabric DocumentSafe feature comes in. It provides a way to securely share documents (that may be stored on any on-premises or on-cloud documents storage) that can only be viewed by the intended recipient and are marked in such a way that makes the document traceable.
Note that the DocumentSafe feature does not require third party licenses or add-on’s from another vendor. It is simply another value added Enterprise File Fabric feature that customers can take advantage of.
There are two elements to DocumentSafe, which can be used separately as needed.
The first is a ‘read only’ permissions extension which has an extra option, ‘web view only’. If this is checked the file will not be visible in desktop or mobile clients and document previews can only occur from the web.
The second is the watermarking of documents. The File Fabric currently supports the watermarking of files in the following situations:
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- File Previewing
- Files accessible from Shared URLs
The watermarking feature can be enabled for either, or both of those options.
When watermarks are enabled both visual and non-visual stamps are placed in the documents. The visual stamps placed are:
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- In the centre of the document
- In the footer of the document
The original content is not obfuscated as the watermarks are translucent. Administrators can control the colours, fonts and sizing of the watermark. The watermark that is applied in the centre of the document will contain a unique reference number. It is this that can be used to trace the document back to the original user.
The visual watermark in the footer does not contain a unique identifier, but instead contains a message that can be set, such as “This document is the property of MyCompany. Sharing is not permitted to any unauthorized persons or entities”.
In addition to visual watermarks, non-visual watermarks are also applied to documents. These are applied as metadata and these also provide traceability back to the original user.
Each watermark code can be tracked from the File Fabric’s Audit Event logs. From the Audit logs Admins can search for matching watermark stamps and correlate these back to the user that initially previewed or shared the file.
Watermarks are primarily applied to PDF documents, however this can be extended to include Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents also.
In summary DocumentSafe provides a restricted, secure way of providing documents for viewing only with full traceability and protections for the documents that is shared in this manner
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