Management Information Systems

MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

Chapter 12
information Rights
Management
(IRM)
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

Objectives
• After we complete this chapter we will know about :-
1. Information rights management and DRM
2. Differentiation of privacy and rights
3. How permission managements works
4. Data and information cryptography (encryption and
decryption)
5. Software licenses among the world
6. Standardization and copyrights
7. Computer crimes and computer abuses.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

Information rights management

• Information rights management (IRM) is a subset of digital rights
management (DRM), technologies that protect sensitive information from
unauthorized access.
• This means that information and its control can now be separately created,
viewed, edited and distributed. A true IRM system is typically used to protect
information in a business-to-business model, such as financial data,
intellectual property and executive communications.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

• IRM(information rights management) technologies typically have

a number of features that allow an owner to control, manage and
secure information from unwanted access.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

Privacy And Rights

• Privacy is the claim of individuals to be left alone, free from
surveillance or interference from other individuals or organizations,
including the state. Claims to privacy are also involved at the
workplace.
• Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or
entitlement.
•  rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of
people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social
convention, or ethical theory.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

internet Challenges to privacy

• internet Challenges to privacy in Internet technology has posed
new challenges for the protection of individual privacy.
Information sent over this vast network of net computer
systems before it reaches its final destination.
• Each of these systems is capable of monitoring, capturing, and
storing communications that pass through it.
• Websites track searches that have been conducted, the
websites and web pages visited.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

• It is conducted not just by individual websites but by

advertising networks such as Microsoft Advertising,
Yahoo, and Google’s DoubleClick that are capable of
tracking personal browsing behavior across
thousands of websites.
• Both website publishers and the advertising industry
defend tracking of individuals across the web because
doing so allows more relevant ads to be targeted to
users, and it pays for the cost of publishing websites
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

Permissions management
Once a document is encrypted against unauthorized users, an
IRM user can apply certain access permissions that permit or
deny a user from taking certain actions on a piece of
information. Some of these standard permissions are included
below.
• Strong in use protection, such as controlling copy & paste,
preventing screenshots, printing, editing.
• A rights model/policy which allows for easy mapping of
business classifications to information.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

• Offline use allowing for users to create/access IRM sealed

documents without needing network access for certain periods
of time.
• Full auditing of both access to documents as well as changes to
the rights/policy by business users.
• It also allows users to change or revoke access permissions
without sharing the document again.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

Encryption and Decryption

Information encryption
• Information rights management solutions use encryption to
prevent unauthorized access. A key or password can be
used to control access to the encrypted data
 encryption is the process of encoding a message or information
in such a way that only authorized parties can access it and
those who are not authorized cannot. 
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

Decryption is the process of taking encoded or encrypted text or

other data and converting it back into text that you or the computer
can read and understand. This term could be used to describe a
method of un-encrypting the data manually or with un-encrypting the
data using the proper codes or keys.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

Naming Information Rights

• Information rights management is also known by the following
names:
• Enterprise Rights Management
• Enterprise DRM or Enterprise Digital Rights Management
• Document Rights Management
• Intelligent Rights Management
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

software license
• A software license manager is a software management tool used
by Independent software vendors or by end-user organizations to control
where and how software products are able to run. License managers protect
software vendors from losses due to software piracy and enable end-user
organizations to comply with software license agreements.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

• License managers enable software vendors to offer a wide

range of usage-centric software licensing models, such
as product activation, trial licenses, subscription licenses,
feature-based licenses, and floating licensing from the same
software package they provide to all users.
•  However, some software asset management tools include
license manager functions. These are used to reconcile
software licenses and installed software, and generally include
device discovery, software inventory, license compliance,
and reporting functions.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

ELIMINATE(FREE) DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT

• In reaction to opposition to DRM, many publishers and artists
label their works as "DRM-free".
• Many organizations, prominent individuals, and computer
scientists are opposed to DRM.
• Major companies that have done so include the following:
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

• Apple Inc. sold DRM content on their iTunes Store when it started 2003, but

made music DRM-free after April 2007 and has been labeling all music as
"DRM-Free" since January 2009. The music still carries a digital
watermark to identify the purchaser. Other works sold on iTunes such as
apps, audiobooks, movies, and TV shows continue to be protected by DRM.
• [Link] (formerly Good Old Games), a digital distributor started in 2008,
specializes in the distribution of PC video games. While most other digital
distribution services allow various forms of DRM (or have them embedded),
[Link] has a strict non-DRM policy.
• All music sold on Google Play is DRM free.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

Information copyrights & Standardization.

• Copyright is a legal right, existing in many countries, that grants the creator of
an original work exclusive rights to determine whether, and under what
conditions, this original work may be used by others.
• The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is
an international standard-setting body composed of representatives
from various national standards organizations.
• Founded on 23 February 1947, the organization promotes
worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial standards. It is
headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and works in 162 countries.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

Property Rights
Intellectual property is considered to be tangible and intangible
products and also mind created by individuals or corporations.
Information technology has made it difficult to protect intellectual
property because computerized information can be so easily
copied or distributed on networks. Intellectual property is subject
to a variety of protections under three legal traditions:
• trade secrets
• copyright, and
• patent law.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

• trade secrets Any intellectual work product a formula, device,

pattern, or compilation of data used for a business purpose can be
classified as a trade secret, provided it is not based on information
in the public domain
• Copyright is a statutory grant that protects creators of intellectual
property from having their work copied by others for any purpose
during the life of the author plus an additional 70 years after the
author’s death. For corporate-owned works, copyright protection
lasts for 95 years after their initial creation.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

• A patent grants the owner an exclusive monopoly on the ideas

behind an invention for 20 years.
The congressional intent behind patent law was to ensure that
inventors of new machines, devices, or methods receive the
full financial and other rewards of their labor and yet make
widespread use of the invention possible by providing detailed
diagrams for those wishing to use the idea under license from
the patent’s owner.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

Computer crimes and abuses

• Computer Crime and abuse in the New technologies,
including computers, create new opportunities for
committing crime by creating new type, valuable items to
steal, new ways to steal them, and new ways to harm others.

• In other hand computer abuses can be accessing data by an

authorized person sending it, deleting it, or using it.
and this can called crimes or abuses.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

Computer crime
• Computer crime is the commission of illegal acts by using a computer
or against a computer system. Simply accessing a computer system
without authorization or with intent to do harm, even by accident, is
now a federal crime.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

Computer abuse
• Computer abuse is the commission of acts involving a
computer that may not be illegal but are considered unethical.
The popularity of the Internet and email has turned one form
of computer abuse spamming into a serious problem for both
individuals and businesses.
 Management Information Systems
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM, 12TH EDITION

Information management
Challenges.
• Collecting Information
• Making Information Available
• Ensuring That Information is Used
• Overwhelmed data.