In the public sector, U.S. agencies are testing Enterprise DRM systems to comply with the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidelines issued on June 23, 2006. These guidelines require all federal departments and agencies to properly safeguard information assets which are accessed remotely or stored off site. The OMB guidelines expand on the National Institute of Standards and Technology checklist for protection of remote information.

For most of the U.S. agencies, their first response is to buy and install laptop hard drive encryption, following the not one but two examples of laptop theft from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The next consideration is how to protect sensitive content from email and copy to external data drives, which is where Enterprise DRM comes in. Earlier this summer, the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) issued a request for information (RFI) for a broad “Insider Threat Focused Observation Solution”, incorporating functions from Enterprise DRM, endpoint security monitoring, network access security, and software event log analytics.  DISA, which is part of the U.S. Department of Defense, is planning the next step, a request for proposal (RFP), for later this year. These public sector deployments, when fully implemented, will extend Enterprise DRM protection organization-wide.

One of the remaining "pure play" major Enterprise DRM vendors, Liquid Machines, continues to scale its Enterprise DRM deployments. Its largest deployments include Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo Bank. Liquid Machines has a close relationship with Microsoft’s Rights Management Services (RMS) group. Around 200 managers and other staff at Sterling-Hoffman Executive Search use Liquid Machines Enterprise DRM to protect information related to executive job offers. 

Internationally, one of Intelligent Wave’s largest Enterprise DRM deployments in Japan is with communications provider KDDI, which is scaling its Enterprise DRM protection from 6,000 to 40,000 employee computers. Intelligent Wave’s other large accounts include IBM Japan, HP Japan, NEC and Fujitsu. Intelligent Wave’s CWAT software incorporates endpoint monitoring and network access control to deny access to unregistered computers before they log onto the network, in addition to Enterprise DRM coverage to protect sensitive data files from leakage. They have a couple of undisclosed accounts in the U.S.

In the United Kingdom, the U.K. Ministry of Defence (MoD) is expanding its DII(F) program Enterprise DRM deployment from the ATLAS Consortium and Avoco Secure.  The ATLAS Consortium comprises EDS, Fujitsu, General Dynamics UK, LogicaCMG, and EADS Defence & Security Systems. The UK MoD adopted Enterprise DRM to facilitate secure collaborative working and greater interoperability between MoD and its coalition partners, including NATO governments. The UK MoD’s DII single information infrastructure will eventually provide IT services for about 300,000 users on around 150,000 terminals across approximately 2,000 MoD sites worldwide.

With the standardized desktop configuration, Avoco’s secure2trust will be installed on all of the UK MoD’s 150,000 terminals, and could be deployed further on MoD supplier and partner systems. A key requirement for the project was secure collaboration in a Microsoft environment, with Office applications and SharePoint for a collaboration portal. The Avoco software supports PKI digital certificates to control, protect, sign and authenticate documents, including support of HSPD-12 PIV cards for two factor authentication. Secure2trust has built-in policy templates for restricted, secret and top secret classifications.

Brett Sheppard is CEO of Absolutely Inc. and a GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies Affiliated Consultant.

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