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I just wanted to say what an enjoyable day we had at the T20 World Cup final at Lords. We were seated amongst a large number of Pakistan fans and although they didn't make as much noise as the Indian fans last week, there was some great banter and it was backed up by an excellent game of T20. Lords looked splendid as usual too!
Hi, good Monday morning to ya. I was asked a few weeks ago about the history of Acrobat and to be honest, I rambled a bit and then moved on. I've since been sent a great list of release dates for the various Acrobat versions, interesting reading for the oldies amongst us....
PDF Version Product Name Code Name Release Date
PDF 1.0 Acrobat 1.0 Carousel June 15, 1993
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ACROBAT – you’re 16 years old this month!
PDF 1.1 Acrobat 2.0 ** November 1994
PDF 1.2 Acrobat 3.0 Amber November 1996
PDF 1.3 Acrobat 4.0 Stout April 1999
PDF 1.4 Acrobat 5.0 Brazil April 2001
Sub product: Approval – 8/27/2001 -> discontinued 9/30/2004
PDF 1.5 Acrobat 6.0 Newport May 27, 2003
Sub product: Elements 8/15/2003
PDF 1.6 Acrobat 7.0 Vegas December 2004
PDF 1.7 Acrobat 8 Atlas October 2006
PDF 1.7++ Acrobat 9 Nova June 25, 2008
HAPPY BIRTHDAY Acrobat 9 – you’ll be one year old next Thursday!
Hello, bonjour, ciao!
It's been an interesting few weeks in British politics, but whatever the rights and wrongs of the government’s decision to ‘redact’ or black out the details of MPs expenses online, it once again highlights the ongoing need for organisations to publish original documents electronically without exposing sensitive information.
The government appears to have got it right this time, and I never thought I'd be typing that sentence! By converting everything into images and redacting before converting to PDFs there's no way of undoing what's done. However, my issue with that is that it reduces the usability of documents as they're not searchable. But history has thrown up several examples of organisations that have accidentally revealed confidential details with serious repercussions – from a legal settlement paid by Facebook to the exposure of US military secrets and CIA operations.
These high profile incidents are just the tip of the iceberg. Every day, organisations in the UK redact sensitive information on documents and share them with third parties. Avoiding the pitfalls is easy when armed with the right knowledge.
Judging from the feedback I get at seminars, understanding of redaction tools and techniques among knowledge workers is increasing, but mistakes are still made. Basic redaction errors can be easily avoided. One of the most common mistakes made is to assume that placing a black rectangle over information will fully remove it. When, in fact, only a redaction tool (yup, there's a great one in Acrobat) will do the job properly.
Also, always remember that there are hiding places in PDF and Word documents where comments or metadata may lurk. There are tools, such as the Examine Document tool in Acrobat, that will automatically look for that hidden information so you can remove it.
So look, your information is only as safe as the measures you take to protect it. It’s worth taking a little time to explore the redaction tools available in your document management tools to make sure that you're not caught out..... remember....
- Simply putting black or white rectangles over information doesn't remove it, cutting and pasting from the document will reveal the hidden information, I do this in demos all the time!
- The only way to properly remove or hide sensitive information is by using the specific redaction tools in Acrobat and other document tools
- Advanced redaction tools like pattern redaction or batch redaction can be used to quickly redact large documents or multiple documents
- The Examine Document tool in Acrobat is a way to detect and remove information that might not be readily visible, like metadata and comments.
- Be sure to save the redacted document as a different file to ensure that your redactions are completed... Once you've redacted a document properly, it can't be undone, so make that redacted copy first!
So, after a year of being a 'beta site' we've take a big step towards realizing our vision of a new way to work on Acrobat.com.
We have launched Acrobat.com Premium subscriptions for more intensive business use. And we give a look into the future of Acrobat.com for the coming year, starting with the unveiling of our spreadsheet product, Acrobat.com Tables, on our Labs website. Lots of news, and I'm sorry I didn't mention it at the time but two weeks ago we released Acrobat.com Presentations.... go find them at http://labs.acrobat.com/
I was talking to a few colleagues about the whats and whys of security in Acrobat. As you might know, I like to have a flow or story in my mind when talking about business and/or Acrobat. So, for what it’s worth, here’s my short version of the Security story…
• Security is becoming a bigger issue for our customers, well, for everyone with high value information
• The penalties for losing data are higher than ever
• So companies shave spent a lot on perimeter security (logins to multiple systems etc)
• BUT this misses all that data that gets shared in an ad-hoc, uncontrolled way from the desktop
• So Acrobat can help in this area
• People trust PDF as a secure format so it’s the best place to start
Even if just making a PDF it’s not as secure as people expect
• We can add a whole range of security features to a PDF
Protecting the content with redaction and watermarks, checking for metadata
Protecting the wrapper with encryption, passwords and digital certificates
• We can even link into LiveCycle Rights management services
• But best of all, it’s EASY to use
• Promoting high user uptake and actually being beneficial
Just my way of putting it anyway........
BTW: Ronaldo sold for £80Million, great business, bring on Benzema!
Good morning there! The first quarterly security update has been posted for Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader 7, 8 and 9 (specifically, 9.1.2, 8.1.6 and 7.1.3). The ASSET security bulletin, with links to download the patches, has been posted here...
The ASSET security bulletin, with links to download the patches, has been posted to
http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb09-07.html
Going forward, the ASSET security blog should be a really useful and proactive one.
Well,
I've not been able to log onto my blog for a while.... Add this to a short holiday and all of a sudden my blogging has been replaced by some Twittering..... That's like snacking at a buffet, tasty, but no replacement for a proper meal.
Everything seems to be back in order now, so I shall resume blogging, hurrah or bother! depending on your point of view.
I'm currently averaging 2 customer meetings per day, so as you can imagine time is short but I'll see what I can do.
Flavour of the month: Desktop Document Security
Flavour of the day: Tuna and Sweetcorn in a Pitta
TTFN
Steve