What is Enterprise Rights Management?

Enterprise Rights Management is the persistent control of access to and usage of electronic information regardless of where it exists. It combines encryption with dynamic sets of permissions to prevent the misuse, modification, loss or theft of sensitive, unstructured information.

How ERM works:

When a file is protected, policy keys are used to encrypt it. When the file is accessed, the local agent authenticates the user then decrypts the file, but blocks actions that are not assigned to that user in the policy that is protecting the file. Documents remain protected on both sides of a firewall and can only be accessed by authorized users. Permissions can be revoked or modified without redistributing protected files and user actions are logged and stored for auditing, if necessary.

ERM architectures are built upon:

Enterprise-defined policies that control and enforce the security settings that govern how data can be manipulated within authoring applications.

Dynamic controls that can revoke or modify the permissions assigned to specific users in the centrally-controlled policies without having to redistribute protected documents.

Encryption keys that ensure only authorized users can access protected files, enabling sensitive information to safely travel anywhere.

Strong authentication to accurately identify the user and apply the appropriate security permissions on a per-document basis.

Centralized but flexible management tools that provide controls to separate administrative permissions to maintain segregation of duty requirements.

Accurate and detailed auditing of users’ access and usage history for compliance reporting or security breach forensic efforts.