Tamper Proofing PDF AR Invoice or PO's

[psiebers (Paul Siebers)]

Has anyone done any work with regards to tamper proofing AR Invoices or PO’s? It has been pointed out that employees can potentially open an Invoice or a PO in Acrobat and change Bank Accts or other Amounts. We e-mail most of our Invoices through APM. The concern is greatest with employees being able to print preview and edit prior to emailing.

Thanks!

[Mark_Wonsil]

You can digital certify the document where a cryptographic hash is done and can be checked later. Some providers actually let one display a photo of a signature but that’s just for human consumption. Googling “automated digital signature” will give you some providers to choose from.

[ckrusen (Calvin Krusen)]

Here’s a prior thread on the topic.

Emailing PDF Invoice securely

One of our customer received an invoice with modified Bank details. Now, the money has gone into this other account instead of our bank account. What are some of the methods to prevent this from happening? I suspect someone has intercept the email of the account payable inbox and modified the invoice there.

And besides the concern of your own employees, editing them. There is always the concern that a third party intercepts them and alters the remittance info.

[psiebers (Paul Siebers)]

Thanks for the suggestions… I am wondering if there are any existing security settings that we could take advantage of in the way Epicor creates a PDF? I am not really up on the exact mechanism that renders the data in PDF and could possibly set the security settings on PDF’s.

I see all kinds of apps that allow you to block a PDF from edits being made, but this involves interrupting the document flow and inserting a third party app.

[ckrusen (Calvin Krusen)]

There are DLL’s that are used to create the PDF file. And in those DLL’s is “hardwired” code that sets the various parameters of the PDF.

I only know this because during one version update, those DLL’s changed the scaling used to render the PDF. Something along the lines of old version rendered the PDF to default to printing at 100% scale, while the new version caused printing to be “Shrink to fit” This caused problems on pre-printed forms like checks. That thread may have insight into what other PDF settings are controlled by the DLL.

edit

Here’s the thread. Not as much internal info about the DLL’s as I thought.

Printing to Printer 10.1 v 10.2 - SSRS PDF Output Difference

Epicor does use PDFPrintingNet Library and They do have scaling capabilities. 10.1.500 vs 10.2.300 has a significant difference. PdfPrint has 3 different scaling options in printing: 1. Actual Size - it leaves page as it is. If content of the page is larger than printer printable area, than part of the content will be truncated. 2. Fit to margin - if content of the page is bigger or smaller than the printable area, content will be re-sized so it fits printer printable area. 3. Shrink to marg…

[psiebers (Paul Siebers)]

Ah! That’s a great lead… Thanks!

[ckrusen (Calvin Krusen)]

PDFPrintingNet.dll is in the client folder.

But I’d assume that server side printing, like Adv Print Routing, use a copy of that that is on the server.

You’d need to alter the Epicor DLL’s that call functions within PDFPrintingNet, have the Epicor DLL enable the security settings in the PDF to be generated, via settings within PDFPrintingNet.

[psiebers (Paul Siebers)]

That’s a nice project to figure out how to throw in controls!

[psiebers (Paul Siebers)]

Just wondering if it is easy to prevent printing of AR Invoices or PO Forms? Can I disable the print and print preview buttons on menus?

[ckrusen (Calvin Krusen)]

You can set security on the form that pops-up (the epicor window where the user selects options for the report to be printed)

[pferrington (Patrick)]

May be a little early but I will mention that digital signing of report PDFs is a feature that will be found in 10.2.600 upon release. It uses the digital certificate store that has been in Epicor 10 for several releases - primarily used for sending formal electronic reports to governments that require them. IN 10.2.600 you will be able to import a digital certificate and on the report style I believe select the certificate you wish to use to sign the PDF. When the PDF is generated and digitally signed adobe acrobat and other readers will report signing errors if someone without that certificate modifies the contents of the PDF.

[psiebers (Paul Siebers)]

That is wonderful news, and yet another reason to bring upgrading to the front burner!

Thanks!