3 Secure File Sharing Benefits Enterprise DRM Provides The BFSI Sector

Posted by Ankur Panchbudhe on September 15 2015

Every time data leaves the secure boundaries of a corporate network, it’s susceptible to being lost, leaked or stolen. ThinkstockPhotos-482464039

The banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector is especially vulnerable to data loss due to the sensitive nature of the information BFSI firms must protect.

Fortunately, BFSI firms are able to keep their most sensitive data under their control — no matter where it goes — with enterprise digital rights management (DRM) technology.

Here are three ways the BFSI sector benefits from enterprise DRM:

1) Keeps top-secret information protected in motion: Financial services companies, banks and insurers around the globe leverage assets such as trade secrets, intellectual property, algorithms and formulas to turn profits and satisfy their stakeholders.

Proprietary information is what sets firms apart from their competition, so protecting that data is critical. This data is typically kept on secure, isolated servers. But sometimes it has to move. Enterprise DRM helps IT teams protect sensitive information by allowing the data to move in an encrypted format. Encrypting data in motion adds an additional layer of security to this sensitive information.

2) Enables enterprise file security on both corporate and personal devices: Professionals in the BFSI space often rely on complicated Excel spreadsheets to conduct financial analyses. An IT team at a bank with a global workforce might have end-user demand to access these confidential spreadsheets via their tablet devices.

IT must decide whether to make those spreadsheets available via tablet, and if so in what form. Here, enterprise DRM helps to ensure that any mobile copies of these spreadsheets are solely available in read-only format and may not be attached to email or accessed by third-party applications on the tablets.

Data containerization is an extension of enterprise DRM that allows IT teams to control how data is accessed. By restricting access down to a specific folder, IT can make sure end users aren’t able to copy sensitive data from a secure file server to their laptops and personal devices. Any user that tries opening a copy of the protected file receives an error message, as access to such a file is restricted to within the file folder on the server.

IT could also require that any data sent or copied to an external device must be delivered in DRM’ed form. This allows IT to automatically apply DRM rights and policies to any corporate data that exists outside of the corporate network. Even if a DRM’ed file is copied and shared multiple times, every time it’s opened, a ping to the original corporate server verifies the established access rights controls.

3) Assigns access rights based on granular access controls: Strict industry regulations often stipulate access rights for specific data in the BFSI space. Granular access control is essential to enforcing such stipulations.

For example, banks typically partner with vendors to handle large-volume printing of customer statements. To get the statements to customers, banks must pass the highly sensitive information to the third-party printer. To maintain the integrity of this sensitive data, banks need to use DRM to control access rights on their statement files. A DRM policy might permit these files to be opened and printed once, after which the file becomes unusable. Even if the files were later shared with an unauthorized user, the DRM features would render the data useless.

Enterprise DRM also keeps data safe in the BFSI sector when vendors and employees stop working with an enterprise. If an insurance broker with a laptop full of customers’ PHI goes to work for a competing agency, his former company needs to ensure he doesn’t take that customer data with him. Enterprise DRM could help with tools that containerize enterprise data on the employee’s mobile devices. Remote wiping technology allows IT administrators to selectively wipe enterprise data from a user’s devices without affecting any personal files.

By enabling data to remain encrypted at use, at rest and in motion — coupled with granular access controls spanning both corporate and personal devices — enterprise IT teams in the BFSI sector are in a much better position to keep their data secure, even as it travels beyond the corporate network. Enterprise DRM is an essential solution for keeping the BFSI sector’s most sensitive information secure.

Read 5 Ways Enterprise DRM Helps The BFSI Sector Avoid Costly Data Leaks to learn more about enterprise DRM and how it enables BFSI firms to keep sensitive data under control.

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