Controlling E-Mail and Document Sharing with Windows Rights Management Services

A forthcoming Windows feature called Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) will help organizations control the distribution and use of confidential data such as documents and e-mail messages. Using RMS, the Professional Editions of Word 2003, Excel 2003, PowerPoint 2003, and Outlook 2003 enable users to place restrictions (such as “do not print”) on documents and messages and ensure that those restrictions are enforced when any other user accesses the protected content. RMS could help drive upgrades to Office 2003 in organizations that particularly need to control access to documents and e-mail, such as organizations that are subject to privacy regulations or legal firms, which must guard attorney-client privilege. 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 marketed as a way for content producers, such as record companies or movie studios, to protect digital media content from unauthorized duplication and use.