Safeguard your Office 2007 files with encryption, document protection, and digital signatures

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In today's business environment, we expect more from office productivity software than just the ability to send and receive e-mail, format documents, produce spreadsheets, and create slide presentations. We also want a way to protect those files from unauthorized access, infiltration of malicious code, and even misuse by those with whom we share them.

Many security mechanisms to help protect our files are in play on modern networks. But even with network-level protections and the security mechanisms built into modern operating systems, it never hurts to have extra protections built into the applications, as well. Microsoft Office 2007 has a number of data protection features that help to protect the confidentiality and integrity of files created with Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. We'll look at three of these features here.