How do I make a file “uncopyable”?
Here is my mission:
I have a friend who owns a burglar alarm/fire protection business. He has an engineer that creates blueprints of buildings with either a burglar alarm system or sprinkler system installed. Sometimes both.
What my friend would like to know is if there is anyway possible that his engineers can open a floorplan, make changes, re-save the file to the hard drive, but not allow that file to be copied to anything else.
He is running Windows XP Professional SP2 (I know there is SP3 available but he doesn’t have it YET!)
He is just leery of people stealing all the blueprints that his firm has created and either using them somewhere else or presenting them as work of his firm with sub-par work on them as to sabotage his business.
Putting a windows log-on password and making the folders “private” is not going to work. The engineers need to get on their computers without having the boss log them on. He really wants them not to know that they can’t copy those blueprints unless they try…then obviously they will know.
Does anyone know of any software or a way that WINXP will make a file “uncopyable”?
The engineers have to be able to open it, print it, edit it and re-save it to the hard drive. My friend just doesn’t want the files to be copied on to anything else like a CD, DVD, flash drive, etc.
burglar alarms
May 23rd, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Caffeinated Content
Can use PDF and set file properties so it has a password and not able to be printed/opened without it. Or use encryption software to encrypt any file saved. Believe Word has limited protection, but not sure if it is password protected from being open.
Ron
May 24th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Create a video blog…instantly.
Almost impossible if you are allowing them to open it, change it and save it. First of all, you would always want to save changes as a different version in case the screw up the originals. When saving, all someone has to do is click “save as” and save it to a usb thumb drive. One idea is to have the work done on a pc that does not have any usb ports, a cd/dvd burner or email access. That makes it hard to transfer files for normal business though. The other is to install software that monitors all activity and logs it. That way he can see what is going on. In some states you have to tell you employees that such software is in us.