PROJECT DETAILS

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI), coordinator of the U.S. standards and conformity assessment system, makes nearly 180,000 standards and related documents available for purchase in PDF format via their eStandards Store (webstore.ansi.org). Content from more than 85 domestic, foreign, regional and international standards bodies spans all industry sectors and satisfies the needs of more than 35,000 customers each year.

Many of ANSI’s content providers require that documents provided on the eStandards Store be protected with digital rights management (DRM). This helps to ensure the integrity of the standards for the end-user while also protecting the copyright of the developer.

Transition between DRM Solutions

Initially, the Institute employed Adobe’s Content Server to provide digital rights management. When Adobe discontinued the product in 2005, ANSI needed to find an alternative DRM solution to protect the thousands of standards and documents upon which their customers rely. After a thorough evaluation of third-party DRM solutions for PDF, ANSI chose FileOpen Systems’ WebPublisher™, a flexible toolset for encrypting PDF files and authenticating users via the client’s web server.

"FileOpen’s solution fit nicely into our environment," said Michael Petosa, Director of Information Technology at ANSI. "It far exceeded our expectations in terms of performance, ease of integration and extensibility."

Real-time Encryption and Watermarking

Today, documents purchased from webstore.ansi.org are processed in real-time: a customer-specific watermark is imposed on each page and the file is encrypted before customer download. Upon first use by the customer, a query is sent by the FileOpen client to the ANSI PermissionServer and retrieved from a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database.

For single-copy sales, document usage is restricted to one machine; other permissions vary depending on the content provider’s requirements. The system also manages site-license subscriptions and provides an open protocol for cooperative distribution and resale arrangements between ANSI and its partners in the standards community.

Seamless Transition for ANSI and Its Customers

The implementation of FileOpen Systems’ WebPublisher improved the security and flexibility of ANSI’s DRM solution. With the adoption of the FileOpen solution, its web-based administration console and its support of multiple operating environments, IT intervention is no longer required to administer and change the Institute’s content-management policies.

ANSI’s customer service team was prepared for end-user technical support issues – particularly with customers already accessing files that had been encrypted using Adobe ContentServer – during the system’s mid-year 2007 rollout. But, during the launch, “we saw the number of helpdesk calls pertaining to document activation drop dramatically,” said Petosa.

This seamless transition for ANSI’s end-users results from WebPublisher’s support of the native Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader applications. In fact, ANSI’s customers can continue to open documents processed by the old system even as they download and view documents in the new FileOpen system, all in the same Adobe viewer.

“FileOpen is becoming widely-recognized for its ability to control the use of valuable technical information and maintain its authenticity,” observes Petosa. “This tool offers a comprehensive DRM solution for those who set standards, and those who use them.”