Executives are reluctant to utilize electronic data communications for their confidential communications because of the risk of improper distribution and discovery. Many executives have been harmed because their sensitive messages have been utilized in ways unintended at the time of writing of the message. Sending messages to trusted partners is risky because the trusted partner often sends it on to their trusted partners for advice. Rapidly, hundreds of people can have a copy of sensitive information and often one of those recipients is not trustworthy.

Customers traditionally protect their information by building barriers to access. Billions of dollars are spent per year on firewalls, virtual private networks, secure data bases, virus blockers, and server hardening. These barriers provide valuable functions. However, they don’t do anything to protect the content of files against misuse by anyone who has access to the file. Anyone who has access to the file can intentionally or by mistake send the information to “the enemy.”

Customers are now starting to recognize the significance of the problem. Most customers are only recently starting to think about the fact that traditional security solutions build a fort around the information but don’t do anything to protect the information from actions of people inside the fort. Forts are no longer useful in the modern military because the enemy can penetrate most any military fort. Similarly, information security forts are no longer adequate to protect against cyber theft.

In addition to compliance with laws and regulations, companies are now recognizing that they must protect their information as a valuable asset. The Wall Street Journal has stated the following summary of the problem. “But now companies are starting to look for ways to keep stuff from getting out. The reason is simple: for all the damage that invading viruses can do to a system, businesses increasingly realize their greater vulnerability is already inside. It’s Marge in accounting or Bert in the call center – employees who have access to valuable trade secrets, financial data or confidential client information and who, intentionally or not, might send it to someone who isn’t authorized to receive it.” Forbes included an article titled, “The Insider, when a top employee is suspected of stealing data, things can get messy.” It states that “Insider network abuse ranks second only to viruses, according to the annual Computer Security Institute – FBI survey. Employees often keep duplicate versions of sensitive data on their PDAs, BlackBerrys and home computers. Of the companies in the FBI study that reported insider abuse – and 80% did – one third didn’t even know how many times their systems had been compromised. Integrity, not ability or the fear of getting caught, is all that separates a conscientious employee from a thief.” Information Week states the key point, “Data breaches are a constant threat and put companies in danger of losing their most valuable asset: customer trust,” is perhaps the greatest concern that companies should have. “The potential black eye that a company could receive is measurable in hard dollars, especially when you tally lost customer business, goodwill with customers, as well as lost future business.” “Despite growing concern over identity theft, it appears that companies aren’t doing all that they can to protect customer data.”

The crucial role that enterprise DRM (eDRM)can play is just starting to be recognized. One of the reasons that eDRM has not been recognized as playing a major role is that most eDRM products are not built to be compatible with the needs. Many industry analysts have observed that effective use of enterprise DRM requires sharing of files of all popular formats with diversely located users who use different systems. They have observed that most eDRM products are designed to work within one enterprise environment on one operating system and for sharing of files in just a few formats. Customers are now asking for an eDRM product that can be easily used to share files in all popular file formats with people around the world.

One of the industry analysts who has stated the importance of these key variables is eWeek writer Jim Rapoza. On April 26, 2004 he wrote that most digital rights management information security products "are tied to Microsoft Corp.'s Office or Adobe Systems Inc.'s Acrobat." He stated that FileSECURE is different. "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."

Most products have not been designed to meet these crucial requirements. AirZip FileSECURE has been designed to enable communications with confidence with people anywhere with all printable file formats. AirZip FileSECURE server runs on all popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, IBM AIX, Hewlett-Packard HP-UX, Apple Mac OS X and Sun Solaris, and Linux. And AirZip FileSECURE clients run on all Windows versions from 98 on.

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