Information Rights Management – Part 1

Managing access to business critical information has long been a challenge faced by CXO’s across the world more so because the leakage of business critical information can lead to major ramification for organizations.

To help overcome this precise challenge Microsoft Office 2007 provides a comprehensive and cost effective platform for ensure that the right information is made available to right people in a secure manner. The key benefit of Information Rights Management (IRM) is that it is far more secure than passwords as long as the security of the digital certificates is not compromised. Further the system also supports Document Life cycle management.

Information Rights Management (IRM) allows individuals and administrators to specify access permissions to documents, workbooks, and presentations across their life cycle. This helps prevent sensitive information from being printed, forwarded, or copied by unauthorized people. After permission for a file has been restricted by using IRM, the access and usage restrictions are enforced no matter where the information is, because the permission to a file is stored in the document file itself.

IRM helps individuals enforce their personal preferences concerning the transmission of personal or private information. IRM also helps organizations enforce corporate policy governing the control and dissemination of confidential or proprietary information.

IRM helps to do the following:

• Prevent an authorized recipient of restricted content from forwarding, copying, modifying, printing, faxing, or pasting the content for unauthorized use
  
• Prevent restricted content from being copied by using the Print Screen feature in Microsoft Windows
  
• Restrict content wherever it is sent
  
• Support file expiration so that content in documents can no longer be viewed after a specified period of time
  
• Enforce corporate policies that govern the use and dissemination of content within the company
  

The second part of this blog will help illustrate specific business business scenarios where IRM provides immediate demonstrable benefits. The specific examples quoted in this post relate to Sales and Marketing, Contracts and Finance.

Technorati Tags: Office 2007,Microsoft,Information Rights Management

Blogging using Office 2007

Blogging has been a long term hobby of mine and so I keep looking out for ways to make my experience as simple as possible. In fact for a long time I had been looking for means of blogging straight from my word processor (the default usually was MS Word). Previous to the Office 2007 this could be accomplished using third party add-ins to MS Word but with Office 2007 Word the process becomes more or less seamless.

This blog entry provides a short summary of the How-to for Blogging using Office 2007 Word. A more detailed article is available from the Microsoft website and can be accessed by clicking HERE.

Before you start blogging you need to setup a blog account. You can host your blog either on the internet or the intranet depending upon the content and the audience. For external blogs you could use providers like Live.com (the mother portal of the Hotmail Service) or TypePad. Usually the easiest way to setup your blog is to go to http://spaces.live.com and login using your hotmail username and password, follow the instructions and your blog site is setup in a couple of minutes.

For internal blogs you could use either Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS3.0) or your Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007 (MOSS2007). For setting up your blog on WSS3.0 or MOSS2007 you need to speak with your Site IT Resource. A list of the most popular blogging sites is provided below so pick and choose your provider based on your preference.

Blogging Service Providers

 

Office Word 2007 supports several different blog service providers, including the following:

 

• Windows Live Spaces Web address: http://spaces.live.com Follow the instructions on the home page to create your own space. The service is free.
• Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services:  If your organization hosts a Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site, ask the site manager to set up a blog page for you.
• Community Server Web address: http://www.communityserver.com Follow the instructions on the home page to purchase your own hosted community site, including blogs, forums, file sharing, photo sharing, and user management. The service is available on a tiered price structure.
• WordPress Web address: http://www.wordpress.com Follow the instructions on the home page to create your own space. The service is free.
• Blogger Web address: http://www.blogger.com Follow the instructions on the home page to create your own blog. The service is free.
• TypePad Web address: http://www.typepad.com Follow the instructions on the home page to purchase your own hosted blog site, including features that facilitate design, posting, Web integration, and community management. The service is available on a tiered price structure.

You may find additional providers by going to the Microsoft Office Marketplace and searching on blog providers.

 

 

Initial Preparatory Steps

After you have setup your Live Spaces account you would need to carry out a few simple configuration steps to allow you to use Office Word 2007 as a blog editor. First, go to http://yourblogname.spaces.live.com where “yourblogname” is replaced by the unique name you have selected when you setup your blog site. You will reach a page which looks similar to the one shown below.

Sign in by clicking using the link highlighted using the Arrow.

Once you have successfully logged in you will see the following page. Click on the Options Icon and a dropdown list as displayed in the screen below will be displayed.

Click on the E-mail publishing option, and then follow the steps for turning on e-mail publishing.

My First Blog

 

To start blogging using Office Word 2007 click on File followed by New. The following dialog screen will open.

Select New blog post. Click on Manage Accounts and fill in the information on your blog space and the secret word you had selected when you configured email publishing. Selecting remember secret word is optional. Click Ok and you can now start creating your first blog.

In the file type the title “My First Blog”. Type a brief introduction about yourself and the blog site. Once you have finished writing your blog click on Publish and your first blog will be published. You can also publish the blog as a draft and publish the same to the rest of the world after you have reviewed and made the necessary changes.