April 26, 2004

AirZip Takes a Dedicated Approach to DRM

By Jim Rapoza, eWeek

For any company considering a digital rights management solution, one of the biggest questions is: Will it work with the content-creation applications that the company uses? Most products are tied to Microsoft Corp.'s Office or Adobe Systems Inc.'s Acrobat. If an organization uses something else, finding a DRM solution gets a lot more difficult.

To get around this limitation, AirZip Inc. uses a dedicated Windows client application in its FileSECURE 2.01 platform, which shipped last month. The result: intuitive applications that enabled us in tests to manage rights and policies for content access and distribution, protect content in a drag-and-drop authoring client, and read protected content in a simple reader application.

FileSECURE's client-based approach makes it possible to encrypt and protect almost any file or content type without worrying whether it integrates with an editing application. While there is a weakness in this approach, in that there can't be mandatory policy enforcement within the authoring applications themselves, most DRM implementations focus on content recipients, not content creators.

We also liked that FileSECURE allowed us to define directories that could automatically protect content as it was added to the directory. FileSECURE can integrate with Active Directory and any LDAP user directory.

The cost of a complete FileSECURE implementation starts at $5,000; additional license seats cost $10 each with volume pricing.

For more information, go to www.airzip.com.

For Original Article: here.