Top 5 Reasons You Need Enterprise Digital Rights Management

Corporate data is the lifeblood of business and because of remote work and constant competitive pressures, it is more vulnerable than ever. Protecting that data while still making it available to those who need it is why many organizations are turning to Enterprise Digital Rights Management (EDRM).

Information security, privacy, regulatory compliance, and data governance requirements drive how we manage corporate data. Business requires us to share sensitive information with employees, contractors, business partners, and customers, but we need a way to do it securely without impacting everyone’s productivity.

The realities of today mean that many of us may work from any location at any time, using any device. Outsourced functions range from finance and human resources (HR) to design and manufacturing. If you outsource manufacturing or finance to a third party, how do you define your corporate boundary for data, since your sensitive information is in the hands of a business partner? Add to this the real threat of external hackers and insider threats from employees, contractors, and the third parties you use for key business functions.

How do you protect the most important information in your business?

Here are 5 reasons why you should seriously consider Enterprise DRM as part of your information security, data governance, and compliance strategy.

Protect Your Intellectual Property

Intellectual property (IP) is a critical asset for your business. It lets you create unique products and services that drive revenue. It differentiates you from the competition and keeps your customers coming back. If this information accidentally or deliberately leaks, you can suffer financial loss and possibly go out of business.

EDRM protects your intellectual property from unauthorized access and controls what an authorized user can do with it. You can grant or block a user’s ability to view, edit, print, copy, and even take a screen capture of the information. You can control derivatives of documents since people share IP in PDF or other common formats with both internal and external recipients. Since you have a complete audit trail of user and document activity, you know if someone accessed the documents inside or outside your network. You can also revoke access or change permissions after you distribute a document if the sensitivity of the information changes or those who should have access to it.

Protect Customer Data

Any business that deals with personal information or takes credit cards must protect it from unauthorized access. Regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and other numerous laws mandate that third-party data is under strict control and only authorized people can access it. Violations can result in hefty fines and cause major legal and business problems.

EDRM controls how employees, contractors, and business partners use this sensitive information. It can prevent sharing the data with unauthorized users by controlling access, screen captures, and adding visible watermarks to both printed documents and those viewed on a screen or mobile device. Since third-party data typically has a shelf life, you can limit access to a specific time and revoke access to any distributed files immediately, regardless of location.

Protect Your Customer’s Intellectual Property

You may also be a steward of your customer’s intellectual property. Manufacturing and business services organizations commonly have sensitive designs or client data that is worth stealing. An organization’s supply chain can be the weakest link in its security which makes it an easy target for hackers and trusted insiders. Your customers trust you with keeping their intellectual property safe and out of the hands of their competitors.

Enterprise DRM protects your customer’s intellectual property from unauthorized access. You can automatically encrypt and assign access controls to sensitive documents as you save them. If different groups use this information, you can easily limit access based on projects or customers. If an employee working with one customer’s data accidentally shares it with another customer, you are protected since only authorized users can see and use the data. This provides built-in safeguards for those people working on multiple projects.

Protect Employee Privacy

HR, Finance, and other departments have a lot of sensitive employee data, including social security and insurance numbers, health information, salary data, and the results of drug tests or criminal background checks. Controlling its access and distribution is part of the social and legal compact any employee has with her or his employer.

Enterprise digital rights management can limit access to private information by controlling the users and groups that can see it. You can control access dynamically through your identity access management (IAM) system so that as roles change in your company, so do access rights. For information you share with outside service providers, you can provide read-only copies that you can revoke at any time. Only recipients granted access can see the data, so your employees and outside providers can’t share the data with unauthorized users.

Provide Audit Trails

Regulatory compliance is a requirement for many businesses to prove they can manage critical information in a way that ensures chain of custody and proof that only authorized users had access. Compliance is not just a matter of the law but is generally considered good business practice. Compliant companies can prove they take information security and governance seriously and can use this as a selling point to their customers.

Enterprise digital rights management provides an audit trail of all user and file activities to ensure a chain of custody of information for electronic discovery and proves that only authorized users have access to sensitive data. This helps your organization understand the flow of important information and simplifies eDiscovery in the event of litigation. Since many regulations require you to prove to a regulator that you meet their requirements for protecting privacy, audit trails are easily available in downloadable reports.

Enterprise DRM can help you meet information security, regulatory compliance, and data governance objectives, ensure privacy and protect the digital assets of your company. It is the best way to protect your most important business information and get a good night’s sleep.

To learn more, download our Enterprise DRM whitepaper.

4 Reasons You Need Enterprise Digital Rights Management

In today’s business world, information security, regulatory compliance and data governance requirements are driving a top to bottom change in how we manage corporate data. As the walls of an organization blur, new business models make the definition of employee, business partner and corporate information difficult to define.

Many companies allow employees to work from any location at anytime using any device. Outsourced functions today range from design to manufacturing to finance and human resources. If I outsource manufacturing or finance to a third party, how do I define my corporate boundary for data, since my sensitive information is in the hands of a business partner? Add to this the real threat of external hackers and insider threats from employees, contractors and the third parties I use for key business functions.

How do you protect the most important information in your business?

Here are 4 reasons why you should seriously consider enterprise digital rights management (EDRM) as part of your file security, data governance and compliance strategy.

Protect Intellectual Property

Intellectual property (IP) is a critical asset for your business. It lets you create unique products and services that drive your revenue. It differentiates you from the competition and keeps your customers coming back. If this information accidentally or deliberately leaks, you can suffer financial loss and possibly go out of business.

EDRM protects your intellectual property from unauthorized access and controls what an authorized user can do with it. You can enable or prevent the ability to view, edit, print, copy and even take a screen capture of the information. You can control derivatives of documents, since people share IP in PDF or other common formats with both internal and external recipients. Since you have a complete audit trail of user and document activity, you know if someone accessed the documents inside or outside your network. You can also revoke access or change permissions after you distribute a document, if the sensitivity of information changes or those who should have access to it.

Protect Third-party Data

Any business that takes credit cards or deals with personal information must protect it from unauthorized access. Regulations such as HIPAA, PCI and numerous data breach laws mandate that third-party data is under strict control and only authorized people can access it. Violations can result in hefty fines and cause major legal and business problems.

Enterprise digital rights management controls how employees and business partners use this sensitive information. It can prevent sharing the data with unauthorized users by controlling access, screen captures and adding visible watermarks to both printed documents and those viewed on a screen or mobile device. The person sharing the sensitive content can restrict access to a trusted browser-based viewer, which prevents a user from downloading it. Since third-party data may have a shelf life, you can limit access to a specific time and revoke access to any distributed files immediately, regardless of location.

Protect Employee Privacy

HR and other departments have a lot of sensitive employee data, including social security numbers, health information, and the results of drug tests or criminal background checks. Controlling its access and distribution is part of the social and legal compact any employee has with her or his employer.

Provide Audit Trails

Regulatory compliance is a requirement for many businesses to prove they can manage critical information in a way that ensures change of custody and proof that only authorized users had access. Compliance is not just a matter of the law, but is generally considered good business practice. Compliant companies can prove they take information security and management seriously and can use this as a selling point to their customers.

Enterprise digital rights management provides an audit trail of all user and file activities to ensure chain of custody of information for electronic discovery. This helps your organization understand the flow of important information and simplifies eDiscovery in the event of litigation.

Enterprise DRM can help you meet information security, regulatory compliance and data governance objectives, ensure privacy, and protect the digital assets of your company. It is the best way to protect your most important business information and get a good night’s sleep.

Photo credit Jason Baker

5 Steps To Protect Your HR Data

I recently wrote an article about the security of sensitive information in the HR department. While everyone interacts with the people in human resources, most of us don’t think about all the sensitive information they have.

Most of us think about benefits and our 401K when we think about dealings with HR, but there is a lot more sensitive data that is under their control. They also deal with your healthcare information, information about your spouse and family, customer financial information, employee resumes and salaries. They also know when you have given notice to leave the company or when you change jobs in your current company. Add to this the responsibility of developing and circulating company policies and a wide variety of interoffice communications.

Sharing company, employee and customer information with authorized internal and external users poses a unique security challenge for any organization, since HR needs to limit access to sensitive information. While HR may be the first line of entrée into a company, they are also the first line of defense to protect some of the most confidential information in your company.

You need to encrypt sensitive data and apply security policies to it that ensure only authorized users have access to the information, regardless of where they are or the format of the information. Here are 5 steps to help protect your HR data.

1. Encrypt received resumes

Since resumes from qualified candidates are intellectual property and highly valuable to a company, you should encrypt them and apply a security policy automatically as soon as you receive them. This also includes information on criminal background checks and drug testing. This limits access to specific internal users.

2. Lock down files when an employee gives notice

When someone changes jobs within a company or gives notice to leave, you should change the security policy on sensitive company information. You can remove them from a group that has access to information from their old job, so they only have access to information that pertains to them.

3. Maintain Client Confidentiality

You should apply security policies to customer contracts and financial information so that only those customers, appropriate outside agencies and internal employees have access.

4. Protect Intellectual Property

HR knows the people and contractors assigned to different departments and projects, so it’s important to work with them to restrict intellectual property (IP) to those that need access to it. When a contractor leaves, access should be revoked, rendering IP useless to them.

5. Circulate Policy Manuals In-House Only

Company policy can encompass everything from sexual harassment policy to paid time off. This information is as important as anything in your business, but should be available to every employee and contractor. Security policies need to be flexible to allow access by all authorized parties.

Your HR department is the front door to your organization, so you need to implement and enforce security policies to protect the most important information in your business. This is the best way to restrict access to employee PII and ensure that your organization’s important data is secure.

Blog

Top 5 Reasons You Need Enterprise Digital Rights Management

Protect Your Intellectual Property

Protect Customer Data

Protect Your Customer’s Intellectual Property

Protect Employee Privacy

Provide Audit Trails

4 Reasons You Need Enterprise Digital Rights Management

Protect Intellectual Property

Protect Third-party Data

Protect Employee Privacy

Provide Audit Trails

5 Steps To Protect Your HR Data

1. Encrypt received resumes

2. Lock down files when an employee gives notice

3. Maintain Client Confidentiality

4. Protect Intellectual Property

5. Circulate Policy Manuals In-House Only