1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a method and apparatus for preventing illegal leakage of a printout of an electronic document and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for preventing illegal leakage of a printout by outputting the content and security identifier of an electronic document on paper including a security substance, sensing the security substance, and recognizing the content of the security identifier.
2. Description of the Related Art
With improvement in technology of enterprises, the leakage of advanced industrial technology has steadily increased. Such a technology leakage is mostly caused by an insider who intelligently abuses holes in an already deployed security system. Therefore, a technology for preventing external leakage of output confidential documents and drawings is necessary.
Conventional technologies for preventing leakage of a printout have proposed the use of security printing paper. For example, in Korean Patent Application Publication No. 10-2008-0107977 entitled “Security Printing Paper and Method for Manufacturing the Same”, a detection tag is inserted into printing paper such that the detection tag can be sensed when a printout, which is output on the printing paper, passes through a detection gateway. However, it is difficult to detect a person who actually outputs the printout, and it is also difficult to distinguish between a case in which the printout should be exported and a case in which the printout should not be exported.
Another technology disclosed in Korean Patent Application Publication No. 10-2011-0126953 entitled “Apparatus and Method for Supplementing Distribution of Internal Document” provides a method of tracing the illegal use of an original internal document by inserting a watermark into the original internal document. However, it is difficult to detect external export of the internal document into which the watermark is inserted.
Such a conventional technology for preventing leakage of a printout has limits in approving export, preventing leakage, and recording relevant information depending on whether or not the external export of an actual printout is permitted.