How to Protect Word Documents - Best Practices

If you need to protect Word Documents the first thing we can recommend is ensure you are using Word 2007.

If using Word 2007 is not an option read more below on additional ways to protect your documents.

Microsoft Word 2007 offers much stronger password protection than previous versions, using 128bit AES for its password encryption, in plain terms CNSSP-15 states that this level of encryption is sufficient to protect information up to secret level.

To password protect documents directly from Microsoft Word 2007 select Save or Save As from the Office Button on the top left of the application and Tools – General Options – and then enter a password into the password to open box – Select Ok and then re-enter the password.


How to protect Word Documents

Although Word 2007 does offer very good password encryption its strength is only a good as the level of difficulty in the password you choose, choosing easy to guess passwords such as Spouse names can easily be cracked or guessed, an ideal password should be at least 10 characters this should then consist of at least one upper, one lower and one numerical character for example we pick the phrase lostintime and change the characters around to L0st1ntimE although the word still resembles the original which means it is easy to remember it will very hard to guess or crack.

Having an easy password can be cracked by a brute force or dictionary type password cracker in minutes, having a difficult password can increase this period quite literally to years.

In addition to the word document password security you should make sure your computer offers little on no chance for anyone to get hold of the file in the first place, this means making sure your computer has the following

NTFS file as its file system as opposed to FAT32 which offers much greater security
Password protect all user accounts using good passwords as above, and make sure any unneeded accounts are disabled this can all be accomplished through account management. Unsure if your computer has FAT32 or NTFS as its disk format? for more information on converting check here..

All files should be stored in your accounts/profiles Documents area, this will be the default location for most applications.

Make sure your computer is protected by a firewall this will protect your computers software ports, you really need to have two firewalls in place, the first of these is a software firewall that runs on your computer, and the next type is hardware based and is normal on any internet router.

If you are using a shared computer with other users who have admin rights to the local computer it can be safer to store any files on a device such as a pen or flash drive.
Many pen or flash drives also offer password protection, which is very useful as an extra layer of security.

Whatever documents you need to protect only you know the value, speaking from personal experience I employ the maximum amount of protection I can, having to enter two or three passwords only takes a few seconds to enter and although my personal documents are heavily protected themselves I would sooner no one could ever get hold of them in the first place.

If you need to protect word documents or any other type for that matter - read more on overall computer protection

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