Preventing an Invitee from Viewing a Confidential Attachment

Q: A user who was invited to a meeting opened a confidential attachment in the meeting invitation. Is there a way to prevent certain users from viewing confidential attachments? We’re using Exchange Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003.

A:The only effective way to protect against that kind of attack is to use Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) to protect the documents you want to attach to meeting invites (in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or later). RMS requires you to have Microsoft SQL Server and some other prerequisites, and there are client and server components that you need to install.

For more information about RMS, see these Windows IT Pro and Exchange & Outlook Pro VIP articles:

• “Behind the Scenes with RMS”
• “Protecting Sensitive Documents with Windows Rights Management Services”
• “Information Rights Management and You”
• “Using Outlook 2003 as a Windows RMS Client”
• “Troubleshooter: Identifying Exchange’s Role in WRM”

Also see these Microsoft resources:

• Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services with Service Pack 2 (RMS SP2) Now Available
• Windows Rights Management Services

Paul Robichaux contributed to this answer.

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