Using protectedpdf Enterprise, LOMA has successfully improved its ability to deliver proprietary study materials electronically to students globally, while making its content secure online and offline. Click to view the PDF or read the full story below.
Key Challenges:
- Protect intellectual property and control unauthorized access to proprietary study materials
- Supply study materials online to improve worldwide access for students.
- Provide seamless user experience for students using PDF study materials
Key Benefits:
- Control measures added to study materials to protect intellectual property
- Improved delivery of, and access to, PDF study materials for students worldwide
- Protectedpdf study materials integrated with existing business databases to improve distribution
About LOMA
LOMA is a non-profit organization operating globally to provide education and training for the financial services and insurance industries. LOMA has developed college-level content for over 80 courses designed to educate and train industry professionals in the areas of life insurance, annuities, reinsurance, compliance, customer service, and other product and operational areas of financial services.
How Students Access LOMA Materials
When students register for a course that uses protectedpdf documents, they are automatically enrolled in the course exam and are given access to study materials designed specifically for it. Most study materials are published in nine languages, including Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese, for distribution worldwide.
Before Protectedpdf
Traditionally, LOMA published its study materials in the form of printed textbooks and test preparation guides that were sold through distribution centers located in the US and internationally. Customers sometimes faced shipping, customs, and on-time delivery issues. Reducing both the time required for students to receive study materials, and the shipping and handling costs incurred by them, were serious concerns.
Kathy Milligan (FLMI, ACS, ALHC) LOMA’s Vice President of Education and Training, explains, “Meeting our customers’ service expectations is very important to us. It was important for us to find better and less expensive ways to deliver our learning materials while at the same time making it easier for customers to do business with us. Today’s customers expect immediate access. In meeting those expectations and as part of a broader goal of making all our courses accessible online, we also needed a way of providing students with both online and offline electronic options for accessing our content.”
The Need for Protection
For years, LOMA has struggled with how best to distribute its study materials in an electronic format while still maintaining control over, and protection of, its intellectual property. “Publishing our exam study materials in PDF format seemed to be the ideal situation, but we were concerned about how to control the content,” explains Ms. Milligan.
LOMA needed a process to ensure that its study materials could be distributed via PDF, thereby offering students ease of access, but at the same time have protection measures in place to ensure that only authorized students would be able to gain access to documents.
The Solution
Protectedpdf Enterprise Edition allows users to protect their PDF documents while allowing readers to seamlessly access content. Readers are not required to download special plug-ins or software in order to read the document, as protectedpdf documents are viewable in Adobe Reader. Protectedpdf is a flexible platform that can be deployed as a fully customizable on-site installation, or hosted by Vitrium Systems.
Why Protectedpdf?
Adobe Reader Compatibility
“The biggest draw for us was that protectedpdf was based on Adobe Reader technology, and we liked the fact that students would not have to download a plug-in or any additional software to access a protected document,” states Ms. Milligan.
Requiring students to download additional software to access study materials would have been troublesome for LOMA. “Most of our customers’ IT departments do not allow employees to download, much less install, additional software on their office computers,” shares Dennis Goodwin (FLMI, ACS), LOMA’s Assistant Vice President of Learning Support. “It just made sense to go with a solution that worked with an application that students already used.”
Microsoft SharePoint Integration
Protectedpdf Enterprise Edition allows document owners to easily integrate PDF protection into existing IT systems, and create unique protection features and customized application components that are best suited to an organization’s specific needs.
LOMA has integrated protectedpdf Enterprise with the company’s online course registration system, using Microsoft SharePoint to bridge the two systems. The purpose of this integration is to ensure that protectedpdf pulls only certain information from the course registration system to verify a user’s credentials when accessing the study materials.
“The biggest security feature that we employed,” explains Ms. Milligan, “is when a student logs into a study document that is protected, they have to use their course registration credentials in order to gain access to the information, regardless of how they obtained the materials. So if they are not enrolled in the course that uses those documents, they cannot access the study materials.” By tying the students’ PDF credentials to the course registration system, LOMA has a unique way of identifying each student, and whether or not they should have access to certain materials.
Offline Access Flexibility
LOMA allows authorized users offline access to its PDFs for thirty days after unlocking the document. Mr. Goodwin explains, “LOMA implemented this 30- day offline access capability primarily for our interna- tional students who don’t always have full-time access to the Internet or who prefer to study offline.” After thirty days of offline access, the PDF locks itself again and the student must re-enter their credentials to re-gain access to the document.
A PDF’s lifespan, and the length of time that users can access the document, are also tied to LOMA’s course registration system. “Access to the PDF becomes disabled after the exam period is over,” explains Mr. Goodwin. LOMA will extend a student’s access to a PDF if they re-enroll in the course or purchase a transfer to another enrollment period.
Overall Benefit
Maintaining strict control over who has access to LOMA’s study materials, and when they are granted access to them, is crucial to LOMA’s educational delivery model. “You want that higher level of control over your proprietary materials but not at the sacrifice of overly complicating student access and losing course enrollments,” says Ms. Milligan. “One of the greatest benefits of protectedpdf is that it allows us to maintain a certain measure of control, while at the same time providing our students better access to our content.”
LOMA is currently using protectedpdf Enterprise Edition to protect study materials used in more than 50 of its 80 courses. “Protectedpdf has played a significant role in helping us achieve our business objective of making our study materials available online, and improving worldwide access to those materials,” shares Ms. Milligan.
