The PDF Security Myth.

The current standard by applying Acrobat Standard Security will work on the surface to prevent copying or manipulating data from the form. The Bottom Line is anyone that receives a copy of your appraisal has the ability to reverse engineer your document. Our Professional Industry, which has been tarnished, must start to guarantee the integrity, reliability, and accuracy of our final product. 

Using Adobe Self-Sign security will improve your chances from identity theft, but it's not bullet proof solution either. The industry needs to create a standard with a verifiable certificate on the appraisal document itself to combat and prevent appraisal fraud. We are not saying to stop using Acrobat Standard Security; but don't assume that it's actually secure.

The file standard created by Adobe, the “PDF” has long been recognized as the defacto standard. Regardless of the operating system, a PDF document can be opened and read and manipulated. Although many assumptions are made regarding the security of this format, the PDF, indeed, any electronic (binary) file, is not truly secure.

Who says I need to use Acrobat to open a PDF? As long as I can read the zero’s and 1’s on a hard drive (binary format) your PDF file can be opened in ANY program specifically one with a hexadecimal interpreter. A quick scan to find the bits and bytes that need to be modified and a file save are all that is required. Don’t be fooled! Folks that modify PDF files don’t use Acrobat!

Try this out: using Notepad, Wordpad, find a PDF file and click ‘open’; does it ask you for the Adobe file password? No! The file opens, doesn’t look pretty but, that’s beside the point.

To make matters worse, anyone can go online today and find tools for free, cheap and easy that can crack any file format, anywhere, anytime.

The appraisal report can usually be trusted when the lender can work directly with the appraiser in a secure environment. The major dilemma is the advent of the middle man or mortgage broker. These types of clients create a need for a different type of solution for appraisal fraud.

Our solution can be seen as another layer of protection in appraisal security. Our encryption can be used to totally secure the contents of the 2D symbol, using DES standards. This allows for excellent document security and to ensure that crucial data can never be manipulated in paper or digital form.