Information Rights Management

The management of content outside of the corporate firewall, this is where Information Rights Management delivers benefits as it is taken for granted that within the corporate environment everything is controlled.

For many organisations the use of laptops, "Blackberries", PDAs, mobile phones, not to mention USB memory sticks and iPods, means that content is often located on devices where physical security cannot be assured. It is the growth in the number and type of these devices that pose growing challenges for the protection of information. The threats are often percieved as external, such as thieves and hackers, but they are just as likely to be "un-happy" employees who are in the process of leaving the organisation.

In addition, the growth in outsourcing, joint ventures and collaborative partnership working, provides extra dimensions to the control over information.

Information Rights Management has been designed to address these challenges and although there is always a balance to be achieved between "Complexity of security" and "Practicality", the Oracle IRM clear value to a business.

Through the use of encryption technology to "Seal" a file, security, version control, audit trail are implemented with minimal impact on the business users daily activities. A "Sealed Reader" (a bit like Adobe PDF Reader) needs to be installed on a users desktop, or device. This provides the essential link between the central server that manages the individual's rights to access and use information, with the applications that display and edit the information. For example when Microsoft Word attempts to open a "Sealed" document, it commicates with the "Sealed Reader" which determines if it should be able to use the document and what functionality should be available for the document. The functionality in the "Sealed Reader" is able to work with "cached versions" of the document privileges so that those authorised users can work with the document for a limited period of time before their access needs to be verified.

Once sealed:-

• Unauthorised users cannot access it
• Authorised users can open or modify (includes control of copy and print functions)
• Centrally manged audit trail of information usage
• Access to remotely use information can be centrall revoked.