I went with using ghostscript instead

For those who want to do something similar, execute this from your script:

"C:\Program Files\gs\gs9.16\bin\gswin64c" -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOwnerPassword=password -dPermissions=-64 -sOutputFile=\BICRwatch\protected.pdf \BICRwatch\file.pdf

Here's the command explained:

-dNOPAUSE stops ghostscript from asking questions during the process

-dBATCH quits ghostscript after protection is applied

dPermissions=-64 sets permissions to not allow any printing, editing, copying

The rest should be self-explantory to edit.