Virtual Data Rooms with DRM Controls

WHAT IS DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (DRM)?

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a system for protecting digital assets to be securely distributed online or mass-produced digital media from unlawful or unwanted copying or distribution. DRM allows the developer to put measures in place (by embedding code) to prevent users from copying the data or documents or games or installing them on an unlimited number of devices. DRM is also commonly employed for music, movies, e-books, and documents. DRM software encrypts digital content and employs a series of settings and controls so you can control who has access to it. A virtual data room by a reputed data room services provider like Docully VDR includes DRM settings that can be set: 

• Limits on the number of devices it can be opened or set open limits
• Limits the number of Accounts or library limits
• Can provide controls for expiry
• Provide dynamic watermark controls
• Control printing and copy 
• Control screen sharing 
• Offline access controls
• IP address controls
• Restrict or block certain countries

WHAT IS A VIRTUAL DATA ROOM?

A virtual data room is a secure online content depository& secure file sharing and distribution platform. When combined with a digital rights management (DRM) solution, a virtual data room or investor data room transforms what is essentially an online vault for business documents, data, audio and video files, as well as images, to one that absolutely controls who can access certain files, for how long, on how many devices, and more.

Though they are most commonly used by companies during mergers and acquisitions (M&A), secured data rooms for deals are also useful for any industry that needs to protect its digital assets while storing and distributing content.

When a data room combines with DRM controls the files within the virtual data room have an extra layer of protection applied to them. When you set up your data room with DRM controls, the content you place inside it is instantly encrypted and secured. Within minutes you can protect your digital assets and share with authorized users, without worrying about unwanted sharing or distribution.

DRM Controls Help Organizations Avoid Content Leaks

For some companies, content leaks can result in loss of revenue, while for many others, the impacts can be much worse. It could result in lawsuits, damage to reputation, and depending on the nature of their business, government fines, and legal action.

Content leaks can include emails being sent to unintended recipients with attachments or files downloaded and shared on corporate networks when they shouldn’t be. Confidential video, audio, or document links inadvertently shared on social media websites or even a lost laptop with unprotected files being found by unscrupulous people or even authorized users carelessly sharing login data.

While DRM controls can help you protect it as already enumerated above. The best way to protect is by adding strong, military-grade encryption. This lets you convert your unprotected content to a non-readable, encrypted format that can then only be unencrypted when you receive the encryption keys or you’ve been authenticated against another system. But most file-sharing platforms and data room providers offer common disk-level encryption. At this level, only the directory containing the files is encrypted, while individual files remain unprotected and can still be vulnerable to leaks, unauthorized sharing, piracy, and other potential hacks. However, a robust DRM lets you apply file-level encryption. This secures all the individual files and enforces protection no matter where the content resides.

DRM Helps Track How Users Are Consuming and Engaging with Content

An added benefit of using a good virtual data room with DRM controls is that each file can be tracked. This provides the companies valuable insight into how the users are engaging with their content, who has seen it, how many times, and for how long. Which content is being accessed the most frequently?, are videos, documents, or audio files more popular, how are your users accessing content?, what country or IP address are they coming from? What browser or application are they using? All this tracking helps companies to strategize their next moves.

No Login Credentials are Required for Users to Share

Users never enter any credentials so they cannot be shared along with access to your documents. Decryption keys are transparently and securely relayed to an encrypted client keystore which is locked to the user’s device.

Unprotected Documents Cannot Be Uploaded

Unprotected documents don’t leave your computer so they can never be compromised.

This way you can protect documents on your local computer and distribute them by web, email, USB, etc. in a controlled manner.

Lets You Lock Documents to Locations

Using DRM you can ensure that users can only open documents from a specific office location (e.g. the office) to control BYOD use. You can also restrict or allow access to specific countries.

Customized and Non-removable Watermarking of documents for ownership establishment

Watermarks are embedded within data during the uploading process. You can apply custom watermarks that include time, date, user email, etc. on viewed or downloaded documents. You can add watermarks to each page of the document, which may discourage printing or taking screenshots of the pages. Watermarks are useful, especially when it’s vital to determine the source of the leak, as they show when a breach occurred and provide evidence for legal purposes. The watermark feature stops users from altering the documents they have access to and gives you greater control over copyright enforcement.

Adjust user permissions

User permission options are an important part of data security.  DRM lends you the needed control over who can open, view, edit, print, forward, and download the documents or the information contained in the documents. Even after a file is downloaded by a user, you are still able to revoke his permission for access to this document, as the DRM system has the capability to control offline access to important documents.

You Can Set an Expiry Date on Documents and Limit the Number of Uses

This feature allows the owner to set expiry dates on documents, after which the user will no longer have access to the documents. You can also restrict the number of times a particular user can view a document. This ensures that the user has access to the needed documents only during certain processes or transactions. And when everything is complete, you can restrict access to the documents using this setting.

Allows You to Use Customization Features

You can use customization features to create different alerts to coincide with document access expiration dates. Customization works well, as it allows you to differentiate large numbers of documents and not miss any important permission updates.

Set up regular activity reports

Activity reports help you track all actions and changes, which are made within your workspace. This includes document views, downloads, permissions changes, and viewed pages. These reports also allow you to maintain an audit trail of every action that occurred within the workspace.

DRM Lets You Enjoy Enterprise Extensibility 

You can integrate DRM systems with different applications and platforms. It’s very easy to set up digital rights management and connect it to different document readers available in the VDR.

Conclusion

Digital rights management offers great security tools to ensure your business-sensitive documents are not shared without permission. This extra layer of protection is essential for virtual data rooms to ensure that your files with sensitive data are not only efficiently stored in one place, but also secured and accessible only to those who have the requisite authorization.