RMS Builds on Document Protection Features

Office 2003 has more flexible document protection features than previous versions, and those features can work without Windows Rights Management Services (RMS). For example, Word 2003 users can lock down sections and styles of documents by password-protecting the documents. This improves upon previous Word versions, which enabled authors to block all access to a document unless a user entered a password, but did not provide partial access to a document. Excel 2003 and PowerPoint 2003 support similar password-protection capabilities.

But RMS offers a much more fine-grained and secure way to protect material. For instance, with RMS, an author can specify that only members of a specific Windows group can edit a particular section of a document, while other users can only read it. With password protection, in contrast, the user must essentially grant the same rights to all users who don’t know the password.

Furthermore, with RMS, the document author does not have to assign and remember a password, which is more convenient, more reliable (since it prevents documents from being irretrievably lost if a password is forgotten), and more secure (since the user won’t be tempted to write down the password or use a simple-to-guess password). Finally, RMS enables users to protect Outlook 2003 messages, something that isn’t possible with passwords.