Often, users need to share confidential documents to collaborate efficiently. For example, a user might e-mail a document to another user for review. However, when the document is copied from your protected shared folder or intranet, you lose control of the document. Users might accidentally copy, forward, or print the document, where it can be found by a user who shouldn’t have access.
There’s no perfect solution to protect electronic documents from copying. However, the Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) client, built into Windows Vista and Windows 7, enables computers to open RMS-encrypted documents and enforce the restrictions applied to the document. With an RMS infrastructure and an application that supports RMS, such as Microsoft Office, you can:
- Allow a user to view a document but not save a copy of it, print it, or forward it.
- Restrict users from copying and pasting text within a document.
- Make it very difficult to open the document using a client that does not enforce RMS protection.
Windows 7 provides built-in support for using RMS to protect XML Paper Specification (XPS) documents. To use RMS, you need an RMS infrastructure and supported applications in addition to Windows Vista or Windows 7.
