Encrypting powerpoint presentation????

[mboy]

Is there a utility (preferably shareware) that will allow me to encrypt a powerpoint presentation and use a password to decrypt.
Here is the scenario. My company is putting together a presentation of some pictures of proprietary designs. They want to send copies to their customers and prospective clients on cd, but only want people who have a password to be able to view it. Is this possible? Any help or links to software would be greatly appreciated.
Thanx!

 

[n0cmonkey]

PGP may be able to do it, at the very least it could do it with the other person's shared key.

 

[mboy]

Well, problem with pgp is they need to have it on their computer and use the keys. I cant have everyone of my company's clients and prospective customers have to install PGP to see the presentation. I need something that would have the key built in or on the cd, that way, it would ask for a password and when they typed it in, it would allow them to view the slides.

 

[Damascus]

<< Well, problem with pgp is they need to have it on their computer and use the keys. I cant have everyone of my company's clients and prospective customers have to install PGP to see the presentation. I need something that would have the key built in or on the cd, that way, it would ask for a password and when they typed it in, it would allow them to view the slides. >>



I don't think that feature is built into Powerpoint.

 

[mboy]

Did you even read my post?
When did I ask if it was a feature of of powerpoint?

 

[Damascus]

<< Did you even read my post?
When did I ask if it was a feature of of powerpoint? >>



Well it seems to me that it was what you were asking for.
You DID say that you don't want your clients to have to install special software to
view the presentation, and since I don't think it's built into Powerpoint, you're
going to have to force them into installing something anyway.

 

[Xalista]

If you are going to do this, the amount of security depends on the size of the password, not the length of the encryption key. It is of course a very bad idea to put the key on the cd, and then protect the key with a password, because in that case you might as well just protect your data with the password. Unless you expect your customers to enter a ~128 bit password, I suggest just zipping or rarring the file, and ask for a password when unzipping it. AFAIK this is a standard feature in both winzip and winrar. Someone would have to go through a lot of trouble to circumvent this password, but it is by no means a replacement for a real encryption.

 

[mboy]

Once it is unzipped, they would be able to copy from the cd right? Is their a way of preventing this? or are they asking me for the world
Thanks

 

[gsaldivar]

they would unzip from the encrypted zip archive on CD, to their local hard drive.

once the data on the CD has been unzipped, the user can do whatever they want with it. the CD remains encrypted (read-only, remember?) but once the data has been extracted you really don't need the CD anymore...

I think what you want is something that requests a password every time the data is *viewed*. I don't think such a protection exists ...

 

[Xalista]

LOL, I just noticed that the feature you are looking for is probably built right into powerpoint. It is built into Word anyway. In word you have the option to supply a password for opening and one for editing a file. You can even go as far as supplying a password of upto 256 bytes(!!!) which will be used as the key for a RC4 encryption algoritm. I suggest you supply a password for both opening and editing and give your (selected) customers only the opening password.
I think not giving them the password to edit the file will prevent them from saving the file to harddisk without the protection, but I am not sure of this. But you can find that out for your self.

Ask clippit how the enable these security options .

 

[gsaldivar]

awesome! I wasnt aware of this...

Microsoft has a habit of burying features we actually need, among hundreds that we ignore every day

 

[ehanson]

Xalista is correct. To get to that feature: TOOLS > OPTIONS> SECURITY to set your password.

--
ehanson