Enterprise Digital Rights Management (EDRM) is a growing and important part of securing an organization’s information.  The traditional methods of using firewalls and intrusion detection systems are good at keeping the bad guys out, but not so good at keeping those on the inside (the good guys?) from leaking important documents.  EDRM encrypts documents and controls access to them even after they leave the security of your firewall.
  
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is good at filtering content by searching for things like social security numbers and preventing that information from getting out.  But it’s not good at preventing sensitive documents from walking out the door on a thumb drive or other removable media. Read the rest of this entry »

Bill Blake, president and COO of eDocument Sciences, was quoted in a press release from Fasoo.com, Inc. announcing their new Fasoo Context-Sensitive DRM.  Fasoo will demo the new technology at the RSA Conference in San Francisco from March 1 – 5, 2010.  Fasoo Context-Sensitive DRM scans documents for sensitive information, such as PII (Personally Identifiable Information), trade secrets or financial data, and automatically encrypts them with predefined security policies.  Policy management is intelligently implemented at the context-level, enabling enterprises to gain enhanced control and operability of documents. 

Here’s the quote from Bill.  

“As a consulting company focused on document security and data governance, protection of confidential information is a top priority to our clients,” said Bill Blake, president and COO of eDocument Sciences, LLC.  “Fasoo’s E-DRM solution offers our clients significant advantages, because of its powerful combination of flexibility, interoperability and security.  It’s also one of the few E-DRM technologies that protect information throughout its entire lifecycle.”

Download the press release

Last week Google rolled out Buzz, it’s new foray into social media.  The buzz (sorry) has been both positive and negative.  I think the negative is winning as more of the warts are coming through the usual Google veneer.  There’s even a parody video on YouTube about it.  Now the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charging that Google may have violated privacy laws and federal wiretap laws.  These are serious issues.  
  
The crux of the complaints are that users who said yes to Buzz had an instant social network from their email contact lists.  So now all my business and personal contacts in Gmail can see my streams of information and everyone elses.  Talk about a violation of privacy and integrity.  And the worst part was that I couldn’t select anything, it just happened.  In Facebook and Twitter, I pick who I follow and who becomes my friend.  With Buzz, I don’t have a choice.  Google thinks they know better than I do.  To Google’s credit they did respond to complaints, but why did this happen in the first place?

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Organizations that purchase copyrighted material are legally bound to protect the content from unauthorized use. When purchased in a physical format, libraries take precautions to ensure that copiers are not used to illegally reproduce content. When content is purchased in a digital form the ability to make one unauthorized copy could mean there are thousands of unauthorized copies. This exposes organizations to significant liability if the content owners determine that there was a violation of the copyright.

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Another day, another tool.  The big news this week from Google is the launch of their new social tool called Buzz.  The big question is, “Do I care?”.
  
Seems like Google is trying to decide how to deal with Facebook and Twitter by rolling out their own version of these tools.  Since it’s Google, everyone pays attention, but is this another tool in search of a problem?  Google doesn’t have a great track record with these kind of tools.  Hello Orkut.  And what happened to Google Wave after all the hype and fanfare?  Google has a habit of throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks.
  
I need to be in Gmail to use Buzz.  I have a Gmail account, but it’s not my main email.  I rarely go into Gmail itself, but instead access it from Microsoft Outlook or another email client.  So if I’m not in Gmail, Buzz does me no good. Read the rest of this entry »