Did you remember Anthony Levandowski? A Key technologist and pioneer of Google’s autonomous-vehicle project who downloaded more than 14,000 files containing proprietary information and made an unauthorized transfer to his personal laptop.

Cisco’s annual internet report (2018-2023) says two of the top 10 attacks are insider threat issues (file sharing and stolen credentials). It shows that you must look at what’s happening inside the as much as outside.

The data security officers in the post COVID era will focus more on user rights management because COVID changed the work culture entirely. People are now working remotely and legacy system is being replaced by cloud-based universal communication and collaboration (UCC) system. In-person marketing events or conferences are now going virtual. In this “new normal”, risk associated with confidential business documents have increased. To prevent anticipated information leakage, a no-nonsense access rights management has to be in place for organizations of any size.

Digital transformation and data-driven approach is now becoming a reality. Data backups, archives and live data in the ecosystem require risk mitigating measures and need to be protected with Information Rights Management (IRM).

Information Rights Management (IRM) is a technology to protect confidential information from any unauthorized access or action. IRM helps to protect files, emails communication, pictures, Audio-Video, and scanned copies in the organization. It gives protection to files against any unauthorized users to view, copy, edit, delete, forward, print, and take screenshot.

Most of the time information leakage happens when an unauthorized user has access to data and at the end it leads to disclosure of confidential information. This ‘Information leakage’ can cost a fortune to any organization. It could have a huge impact on various facets of an organization, including business, employees, client, partners, market reputation, and credibility. Further organizations that don’t practice using technological means to protect their intellectual property sighting it irrelevant are always on the higher risk of their day-to-day data. Information leakage could shatter any organization; let’s have a look over the different facets getting affected by any potential Information leakage.

Financial loss

The use of technology makes an organization more agile, more flexible, more responsive, and smarter, yet it needs protection against any potent information leakage. It could be a loss of business, lawsuits, penalty or adverse media coverage.

Competitive advantage loss

An organization is always craved for competitive advantage against its competitors. It is one of the most serious losses to an organization. The disclosure of any strategic business or merger & acquisition (M & A) plans can cost to losses in revenue or market capitalization. It also includes the loss of various confidential analytical data, research & development (R & D) data, and other intellectual property of an organization.

Market image and credibility loss

The leakage of email communication, executive communication, and audio-video (A/V) can also be a reason of embarrassment for the senders as well as the organization. This will damage its public image and market credibility will be in a huge loss.

The use of IRM enabled collaboration solution is inextricably in this digital era. Looking closely at the law firms and legal industry that are most prone to information leakage proves that they have been trying to ensure the security of client’s case related data.

The documents, images, and email communications are confidential information and data of any organization. There should be a safeguard against any accidental or intentional information leakage. It helps to avoid violation of any of these applicable regulations like CCPA, GDPR, HIPPA, or HITECH. IRM enables information and its control to be separately created, edited, distributed, viewed, and deleted among users according to their credibility. A well-defined IRM is incorporated in a business application to protect financial data, trade secrets, M & A documents, and executive communications.

The architecture of IRM uses an encryption method to enforce user access policies with various attributes for information protection. With this encryption, there are some additional IRM rules can also be applied to a file or data to grant access for specific activities or customize the access rights.

Even if the file or data is transferred by any user, yet it would be always rendered according to the IRM rules pertained initially. This ensures the protection of files even when shared with third parties. IRM ensures that a data/file can only be accessed under the defined rights including copy, edit, print, share, and even take screenshots.

The management of an organization can customize IRM rules and apply accordingly at various levels including enterprise, department, team, and user based on the criticality of information, applicable compliance, and information governance.

It also enables the monitoring of user access along a track of all unsuccessful login attempts. Later, this can be helpful to take more safeguards in the future. To get more information about IRM-enabled enterprise collaboration solution, you can reach out to our team. Click here to learn more about the product and its capabilities.

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