Judeumeh's Blog

Signs abound that the previously quiet realm of enterprise DRM is now making the must have list for enterprise security system vendors. This promises the potential for enterprises to gain full control of corporate information and data even outside the traditional security environment.

Like anything else in life it often takes a calamity to jumpstart what should have been an obvious requirement in the first instance. After last year’s data loss debacle, many public and private services organisations have had to take a fresh look at how to mitigate the risk associated with data loss. The upshot of this is the recognition of a need for information control even outside traditional corporate security perimeters, a problem that is neatly solved by enterprise DRM solutions as shown in the diagram below.

Although most organisations already have some form of perimeter security mechanisms (e.g. firewalls, data encryption and authentication), many have not bothered too much with the question of what happens if and when information leaves the premises on USB memory sticks or CDRs – a method frequently used by their own employees. However, it all looks set to change now as traditional enterprise security vendors are looking at including this level of control into their offerings.

Diagram showing Traditional Enterprise Security vs. Additional Enterprise DRM

(Source: The World Beyond Digital Rights Management, BCS 2007)

According to an article on DRMwatch, some enterprise content management vendors already recognised the need to control information in this way and acquired relevant companies and products into their portfolios. However, it has taken slightly longer for enterprise security solution vendors, who might be considered a more natural fit, to start integrating this capability into their solutions in order to create a holistic offering that delivers both internal and external control over enterprise data. The hope is that public and private sector organisations will jump on board and buy / implement these solutions with some alacrity, but enterprise customers just like ordinary consumers sometimes do the unexpected. We await further developments with eager anticipation.

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Note: This post was previously published on my BCS DRM Blog, where you can find the original post, and reader comments, in the archives.