Building trust in digital document security

In the office or on the go: Creating and sharing documents from anywhere has become standard practice, making reliable and secure communication all the more challenging. According to a 2023 report by London Research, commissioned by Adobe and based on a survey of IT decision-makers in Germany, France and Great Britain, data security is the biggest area of concern (86%) for IT teams. Three-quarters (75%) of the IT leaders surveyed say it is more important than it was a year ago. When evaluating potential new solutions for a trusted digital work environment, IT decision-makers seek powerful tools that help them protect sensitive PDF documents.

With many years of experience in document security, Adobe understands the need for digital resilience. Adobe Document Cloud is therefore built around helping to protect the security, integrity and availability of customer document workflows and data. For IT decision-makers, the following features signify the safety and reliability of the PDF and e-signature solution:

Compliance with the C5 cloud security standard

In Germany, the C5 attestation is proof of the security and compliance of digital documents. An independent certificate like C5 helps build trust. C5 stands for “Cloud Computing Compliance Criteria Catalogue”. It is a compendium of criteria defined and maintained by the BSI since 2016, providing comprehensive guidelines for the security, protection and availability of data in data centres.

According to C5, solutions that meet these criteria satisfy the security needs of businesses of all sizes as well as the strict compliance requirements for organisations in the German government and public sector.

The BSI performed a thorough review of Adobe Document Cloud’s security approach and found that the PDF (Acrobat) and e-signature tools (Acrobat Sign) complied with all C5 criteria and all requirements and recommendations for secure cloud computing, e.g. in terms of information security, physical security, cryptography and key management, interoperability, compliance and more.

IT decision-makers can thus rely on BSI-certified, trustworthy cloud security – offering transparency of data protection and assurance that their data will be managed in accordance with IT security standards.

Robust data security in a trusted cloud environment

Today’s flexible workplace requires reliable access to data and documents from any location. Adobe enables users to share links and files with greater safety via cloud storage in regional data centres. No more sending large email attachments: PDF documents can be viewed, shared and reviewed online within a more secure cloud environment.

Data centres for Adobe Document Cloud in EMEA bring your data closer to your business and meet the requirements of GDPR. The data centre for Acrobat and PDF services is in Dublin. Acrobat Sign uses cloud storage hosted in Frankfurt am Main and Amsterdam.

Adobe leverages the proven cloud infrastructure of leading providers to ensure the best performance and ease of implementation in existing IT landscapes. Adobe Document Cloud uses the Amazon Web Services (AWS) server environment. Acrobat Sign allows you to choose between AWS and Azure.

Business document protection

Besides secure file sharing, IT leaders find flexible asset settings and sharing restrictions to be essential document security features. Adobe is committed to data availability and security measures that meet customer and compliance expectations.

The following measures help fortify document security in businesses:

  1. Adobe develops its solutions using a secure-by-design approach that enables better resilience against ever-changing cyber threats.
  2. Sandboxing provides for application-level security for our PDF solutions. It enables a protected mode in which all PDF processes, e.g. parsing PDF and image files or rendering fonts, are performed in a very restrictive environment – the sandbox. The PDF document in question is processed outside the local file system. So any attempt to install malware on computers within an enterprise environment will ultimately fail.
  3. This level of security applies not only to desktop software, but also to Adobe apps and Microsoft office applications. Adobe Document Cloud is integrated with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams as well as the Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive cloud storage services. It also provides access to MPIP (Microsoft Purview Information Protection). That means users can create PDF documents in Microsoft 365 and add sensitivity labels, e.g. “Confidential” or “Public”. This approach enables businesses to enforce company-wide access guidelines for all kinds of documents.

Learn more about the security and compliance of document workflows with Adobe Document Cloud, Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat Sign: