Ron Arden, Vice President & CMO of Fasoo, Inc., presented Fasoo enterprise digital rights management (EDRM) technologies to a group of automotive industry representatives in Darmstadt, Germany on September 16, 2015. This was part of a two-day ERM User Group meeting of the ProSTEP iViP Association where industry and academic groups came together to discuss best practices and experiences in rights management solutions.
Automotive organizations have been looking for or are using some enterprise rights management (ERM) solutions to help them protect and control intellectual property. Ron shared how Fasoo’s enterprise solutions have helped numerous manufacturing organizations protect CAD and other office files from unauthorized internal and external access. Sharing intellectual property securely within a manufacturing organization and with business partners and suppliers is a critical component of an overall security strategy to mitigate the risk of theft that may lead to imitations and the loss of revenue.
A number of attendees discussed challenges they have with protecting office documents that contain intellectual property and other sensitive information and need to ensure that only authorized users can access them. With such competition in the global automotive market, especially as electric cars and newer technologies take hold, protecting this information from insider threats and external hackers is a major concern. Ron talked about how Fasoo provides a robust data-centric approach that not only controls user permissions when documents are in use, but provides exceptional security policies to ensure that a user can do her or his job. The ability to meet changing business needs and easily integrate into a company’s existing IT and security infrastructure, makes Fasoo a good choice for many of these companies.
The ERM User Group had a dinner the evening of September 15 that allowed everyone to relax, share business information and catch up on the latest trends. We ate at Die Sitte in Darmstadt, which has a lot of old pictures showing the town and some of the local breweries when they first started. It made you feel like you were in an old beer hall from hundreds of years ago. Of course everyone enjoyed the local food and drink as the conversation went late into the evening. Fortunately everyone at the table and the User Group spoke English as well as German, since my German is very rusty.
Interest in data-centric security solutions like Fasoo EDRM is very high in the automotive industry as well as numerous other businesses in Germany and the rest of the EU. Companies like BMW and VW who have global operations need to protect their intellectual property as it’s created or downloaded from information systems. That information is shared internally and with numerous contractors and business partners. Protecting it regardless of location or device is becoming critical to maintain a competitive edge in the constantly changing global marketplace.