Nuance Communications announced Jan. 29 that it has teamed up with Appligent to give legal, intelligence and security organizations a way to better secure the contents of their PDF documents.
The agreement calls for Nuance to use Appligents redaction functionalities within PDF Converter Professional 4 while also offering several capabilities to Appligents Redax and Stamp add-on platform.
“Most people are not aware that PDF files contain both visual content [text and graphics you can see] as well as internal content [text you cannot see],” Robert Weideman, general manager and senior vice president of productivity applications at Nuance, told eWEEK.
The need for increased security was highlighted by recently published reports by the British Broadcasting Corporation showing how critical information was left in PDF files by corporate, government and military organizations who were using the Internet and PDFs to share redacted documents.
“PDF has made it easier to share same as paper documents, but it also has increased the risk of releasing sensitive information, ranging from financial, legal and government data, to employee records and personnel details,” Weideman said.
PDF Converter Professional 4, which allows users to reproduce a copy of an original PDF file or document, now features Appligent Redax Lite, which combines redaction capabilities into the highlight, strikethrough and underline annotation tools of the application. The platform also enables users to prepare a document for redaction, share the document with others, and redact selected portions of the PDF file or document.
“PDF Converter Professional 4 supports the features that business users require, such as the ability to create PDF files from any PC application, support for security and encryption, form filing and saving, as well as editing and highlighting tools,” Weideman said.
Appligents Redax and Stamp add-on for PDF Converter Professional 4 gives users numerous redaction and security capabilities including:
- Text and zone redaction: Enables users to remove text as well as pictures, tables, charts and zones within a PDF file or document;
- Exemption codes: Includes built-in exemption codes for the United States Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act; and
- Bates Stamping: Allows legal and business professionals to date and sequentially number documents as they are received and processed.
PDF Converter Professional 4 is available now through Nuance for $99.99; the Appligent Redax and Stamp Plug-in for PDF Converter Professional 4 is also available now for a price of $79.
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