Rights Management Secures Office Content

Controlling confidential data could become easier with the help of a recently released Windows service called Windows Rights Management Services (RMS). Using RMS, the Professional Editions of several Office 2003 applications enable users to place restrictions (such as “do not print”) on documents and messages and ensure that those restrictions are enforced. RMS could help drive upgrades to Office 2003 in organizations that are subject to formal confidentiality regulations or are heavily dependent on trade secrets and other intellectual property. However, deploying RMS requires careful planning and considerable training for both administrators and users.

The Case for Rights Management

In general, rights management (sometimes called digital rights management, or DRM) allows the owner of digital data to define what other users may do with that data. So far, rights management software has primarily been used as a way for content producers, such as record companies or movie studios, to protect digital media content from unauthorized duplication and use.