Authorized Applications

This article will give an overview of authorized applications.

You will learn:

1. What authorized applications are?
   
2. What certified applications are?
   
3. Which applications are Anchor certified?
   
4. How authorized applications work in action?
5. What admin approved applications are?
   
6. How to add admin approved applications?
   

What are the authorized applications?

Assuming access rules are satisfied, authorized applications  will be permitted to consume plain text. 

What are Anchor certified applications?

Anchor maintains a list of certified applications, which are applications that have been reviewed by Anchor to ensure plain text does not leak from their normal operations. Anchor allows the organization to disable certified applications.

Note, the organization takes responsibility for how these applications handle data.

The following applications are Anchor certified:

Application	Description
Microsoft Word	Word processor developed by Microsoft
Microsoft PowerPoint	Presentation program developed by Microsoft
Microsoft Excel	Spreadsheet application developed by Microsoft
Microsoft Access	Database management system developed by Microsoft
Microsoft Publisher	Desktop publishing platform developed by Microsoft
Acrobat Reader	PDF reader provided by Adobe
Acrobat DC	Software produced by Adobe to view, create, manipulate, print, and manage files
Irfan Image Viewer	Open-source image viewer
Libre Office	Open-source office suite
WordPad	Basic word processor created by Microsoft
Tableau Desktop	Data visualization created by Tableau Software

Using authorized applications

For example, Notepad is not an authorized application, so opening a protected file in this application will not allow the user to consume the data. This can be demonstrated using the following steps:

1. Within a protected folder, create a .txt file.
   

2. Notice an Anchor symbol has been added to the file. This means the file is now encrypted with the default access rules. 
   

   
   

3. Right-click the new file and open it with WordPad, an Anchor certified application. Add some content to the file and close it. 
   

   
   

4. Right-click the file and open it with Notepad. Notice you will not have access to plain text since Notepad is not an authorized application. 
   

   
   

What are admin approved applications?

Organizations may also maintain a list of admin approved applications. These applications are not certified by Anchor but may be approved by the organizations admin to consume controlled content.

Add Admin Approved Applications

1. Open the Anchor dashboard.
   
2. Navigate to the User Roles tab. 
       
3. Find which user role you want to edit. Hover over the three dots under 'Actions' and click on 'Edit'                              ​
4. Click on the Authorized Applications tab. 
   
5. Click on the New Admin Approved Application. 
   
   
6. Enter the application name and executable path. Then click 'Add.'
   
7. To save changes, click the Update button in the upper right corner.
   
   

• Related Articles

• Admin Approved Applications

  What are admin approved applications? Organizations may also maintain a list of admin approved applications. These are applications not certified by Anchor that organizations trust to consume controlled content. Note, the organization takes ...

• Anchor Authorized File Extensions

  This article will discuss adding and removing Anchor authorized file extensions. Anchor will only encrypt and open files whose file extensions have been added in the Admin Dashboard as an authorized file extension. For a quick video tutorial click ...

• Anchor Certified Applications

      This article contains a list of Anchor certified applications. These applications have been reviewed by Anchor to ensure no plain text leakage in most scenarios and your data remains in the control of your organization.  Microsoft Word Microsoft ...

• Blocking Data Loss Features for Applications

  This article explains how Anchor blocks data loss for applications.  You will learn: Blocking for sharing. Blocking for exporting. Blocking for transforming. Blocking for printing. How to Enable/Disable  Data Loss Features? When configured, Anchor ...

• Anchor Certified Application

  What are Anchor Certified Applications? Anchor maintains a list of certified applications, which are applications that have been reviewed by Anchor to ensure plain text does not leak from their normal operations. Anchor allows the organization to ...