Securing your files with Password Protection

Securing your files, Coolspools

You are probably aware that CoolSpools provides a suite of commands to convert from a secure IBM i (AS400, iSeries) SpoolFile, Query or database table to a multitude of file formats, but did you know that it also provides a mechanism to secure those files with password protection?

The CoolSpools PDF conversion commands CVTSPLPDF, CVTDBFPDF and MRGPDF all include parameters to password protect the generated PDF file using Adobe Acrobat functionality, and a new CoolSpools command LCKXLS allows you to leverage native MS Excel functionality to password protect any XLS or XLSX file stored on the IFS or a network folder accessible to the secure IBM i server.

Any other file types that do not natively support password protection, such as plain text files, can also be secured by compressing them into a password protected ZIP file using the CoolSpools command ZIPDTA.

For additional security, all of these commands provide the option to specify an encrypted password, so that the password value visible within your CL program source is not the actual password value needed to open the file.

To take full advantage of these features we recommend installing All Options of CoolSpools Version 7.  Existing CoolSpools sites should apply the latest Version 7 fix pack to make use of the new Excel password protection command.