Criteria for evaluating IRM technology – Part 3 of Many - Format and application support case study 2 -

This is a multi-part blog entry on important criteria based on which enterprises must evaluate rights management technologies before investing significant amounts of time and money.

Please note that not all criteria might be important for any given enterprise so you will have to pick and choose the ones which are important, give appropriate weight ages and then decide on the best technology.


To view all the blog posts in this series please go to http://blog.seclore.com and then select "IRM evaluation" from the tag list.

Format	Application(s) used internally	Application(s) used externally
Doc / docx	Microsoft Office 2007, 2010	Microsoft Office XP, 2003, 2007, 2010 Open Office / Free document readers
Xls / xlsx	Microsoft Office 2007, 2010	Microsoft Office XP, 2003, 2007, 2010 Open Office / Free document readers
Ppt / pptx	Microsoft Office 2007, 2010	Microsoft Office XP, 2003, 2007, 2010 Open Office / Free document readers
PDF	Adobe PDF reader	Adobe PDF reader, Foxit PDF reader
Email	MS Outlook	MS Outlook, Lotus Notes, Gmail, Hotmail, many others, ...
Drawing / CAD	Numerous AutoDesk products Numerous Siemens PLM products Pro/E from PTC	Numerous AutoDesk products Numerous Siemens PLM products Pro/E from PTC Many other CAD tools

The above is a complex problem and one that is not easily answered by any present IRM
technology.

For the non design formats and applications the criteria remains the same as previous with the exception of MS Exchange replacing Lotus Notes. For the design applications and formats however the list of formats and applications runs into tens. The enterprise in such a case needs to carefully evaluate the requirements.

If the main purpose of the IRM technology is to protect regular business communication and the security of design documents can be ignored then this requirement goes away. If the security of design documents is critical without which the IRM technology itself is rendered useless then one of two options exist i.e.

1.Insist on no change in the present business process which will only allow evaluation of technologies which support all (four in this case) technologies used for designing i.e. AutoDesk, Siemens & PTC.

OR

2. Accept a slight change in the business process where if any design needs protection (before it is sent to an external entity for example) then it gets converted into a predefined "standard" format e.g. DWG / DWF / 3D PDF or JT. Conversion of the design into a "standard" format will, almost always mean some change in business process but this will make the " high jump bar" for IRM technology come down significantly and might be the only option.

For email however the same criteria persists i.e. any technology which is dependent on the recipient's email infrastructure is likely to fail. Since the organization itself is using MS Exchange email, a dependency on internal email system might be OK but not the external email system.

The requirement for format and application support therefore become :

1. Application - MS Office (All versions), Open Office (or another free reader for office documents), Adobe PDF reader, MS Exchange email (should not force the recipient to have any particular messaging system), Adobe 3D PDF reader OR free DWF / DWG reader OR free JT reader.

2. Formats - doc / docx / xls / xlsx / ppt / pptx / pdf / MS Echange email / DWG + DWF OR JT

OR 3D PDF

As always, the more uncompromising the criteria, the lesser number of choices you might have in the IRM technology and the higher may be the cost.

3.This is a small but very important exercise in the evaluation of IRM requirements for any enterprise but our recommendation is that every enterprise do this exercise before considering an IRM system deployment.

Seclore and its partners regularly advise customers on their IRM requirements so please do not hesitate to contact us for any such requirements.