How Modern Information-Rights Management Improves Security, Compliance

New-gen information-rights management can help boost security and compliance by enabling strong encryption, enforcing policies and controlling access to data.

The pressure to make better decisions faster and collaborate with external partners puts immense strain on IT teams to protect confidential information. Companies need a more modern rights-management approach that’s easy to use, can protect and track any kind of data, and isn’t affected when files move beyond the firewall. That’s what modern IRM does—it addresses the challenge of protecting data in a highly collaborative organization without putting the burden on employees to use frustrating, restrictive tools.

According to a survey conducted by Rightscale, less than 50 percent of enterprises in 2013 were still experimenting with cloud services. Compare that to now, when more than 92 percent of businesses have moved core business processes to the cloud. Your data is traveling, and it’s driven by the need to work across organizations.

The most successful enterprises create significant advantage by sharing information—this includes confidential and private data—quickly and efficiently. It’s what teams want and competitive markets demand. Yet in a complex ecosystem of partners, customers and contractors, it’s no longer possible to perfectly dictate the systems or applications your teams will use. On average, every employee at a company collaborates with seven external parties and operates with at least three data- or file- sharing tools. Security and control need to be independent of the tools your team chooses.

To move quickly and flexibly, businesses need to act confidently. This confidence comes from knowing your data will be secure, wherever it travels. Teams within an organization need to track and control who has access to data, and they need to know that it can be recalled instantly when someone leaves the company or violates organizational trust. It’s no longer possible to keep sensitive data trapped behind a firewall. When collaborating on confidential information, teams must use strong encryption and protections to keep critical business information out of the wrong hands. Modern IRM protects data in use, in motion and at rest. It can even maintain protections, should your data move offline.

Employees are collaborating outside their organization more than ever—working on proposals, contracts and financial reports that are critical to protect. Sharing information with external parties is critical for day-to-day business operations, but is often a tradeoff when it comes to security. A Ponemon survey sponsored by Skyhigh Networks found that 62 percent of companies reported employees use personal cloud accounts such as Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive for collaboration purposes. As a result, most companies are challenged with trying to balance the need for open di

Collaboration today is defined by myriad content types—more than files and office documents alone—which shows how quickly content is evolving. Employees are creating images, videos and interactive presentations to communicate ideas in more compelling ways, using non-traditional file types, such as Quip, Google and Office.com. Looking ahead, we can expect the content with which we’re familiar to undergo constant, unexpected change. This means companies must adapt information security to protect data in a future when the scale of the information we generate exceeds our capacity to understand how to manage it.

Since the leak by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, the knowledge that insiders are the biggest security threats is conventional wisdom. This is not to say that all data leaks are of ill intent; there is always the threat of a trusted employee taking files home to work on in their spare time. According to a recent survey of Information Security Forum (ISF) members, the vast majority of network openings were created innocently through accidental behavior by insiders, without any intention of harming their employers. By taking a modern approach to IRM, if you are collaborating with a colleague and he or she ends up leaving the company—or simply no longer needs access to your data—it’s a requirement to change their permissions with a click of a button. It’s better if your tools allow the ability to terminate access to the data, even after it’s been downloaded or moved offline.

Widespread adoption of security tools is the key to closing content security gaps. It is no longer enough for security to be impenetrable; these solutions must be invisible for users inside and outside an organization. If a solution is clunky and slows collaboration in any way, employees will inevitably find risky workarounds, and your investments will get low adoption rates. Modern IRM provides a model of security that allows for widespread adoption. It allows for complete control over your data, no matter where it lives and wherever it travels. Modern IRM provides the opportunity to accelerate collaboration and work in a more trusted and secure environment.