Microsoft® Windows® Security Resource Kit, Second Edition

Protecting Documents in Office XP

Outside of viruses and other malware, preserving the confidentiality and integrity of the content of Office XP might be the most critical area of Office XP security. Office XP provides a number of features to enable varying degrees of protection to documents depending on the level of protection that users require. These features can be grouped into three primary areas:

• Preventing others from reading documents

• Protecting metadata in documents

• Preserving the content of documents

Preventing Others from Reading Documents

Office provides very basic protection of documents through password controls. This protection is not designed to be secure against attackers, but rather an easy-to-use protection scheme to keep nonmalicious ...