What is Liquid Machines?
Liquid Machines enterprise rights management software acts like a private security guard, traveling with information to enforce policies, prevent unauthorized access and monitor usage of protected information. For the first time, companies can share information without impacting user productivity while retaining complete control over how that information is used.
What is so revolutionary about Liquid Machines?
Liquid Machines is the first rights management solution that was designed to support the business. Users work within existing applications using existing functions such as Save and Print. Policies are easily created using web browser that dynamically, yet persistently, control protected information. Audit information is available for compliance reports.
Is information control that big of a problem?
The loss of sensitive corporate data has always been a big issue for companies. In fact, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates intellectual property leakage costs U.S. companies more than $50 billion per year. Now, on top of this, companies face a landslide of regulations like HIPAA, NASD 2711 and Sarbanes-Oxley. Strengthening corporate governance by establishing and enforcing proper information management can help insulate companies from the enormous costs, damage and penalties of data leakage and non-compliance.
Why is information hard to control?
Traditional security technologies such as firewalls and VPNs do a good job at protecting information within the secure network. But unlike network pathways and physical servers, information has no perimeter. It's constantly in motion across companies, users and applications. Consider the following trends:
- The Internet is public. Gone are the days of dial-up directly to the corporate network or leased lines. Information sent over the network, by email or other means, is open for anyone to see.
- Information flows instantly. Digital information is capable of being sent anywhere with the touch of a button.
- Outsourcing. Whether it's sharing product plans with a strategic partner or outsourcing IT infrastructure, third parties have control of extremely sensitive corporate information. To stop the problem, companies need to turn their security practices inside out, bringing security right down to the data itself. That's where Liquid Machines comes in.
How does regulatory compliance impact information control?
Like Y2K, a new wave of federal legislation on corporate governance, privacy and other issues will force companies to spend billions of dollars in order to comply. In fact, AMR Research recently predicted that compliance will drive Fortune 1000 companies to spend more than $2.5 billion in process and IT-related upgrades. There are many components of compliance, but one critical bottleneck is controlling and monitoring regulated information. Without the ability to enforce strict data control policies, it's impossible for companies to claim compliance. Looming ahead are billions of dollars in costs, damages and penalties unless companies can get their arms around information control.
How does the software work?
Liquid Machines encrypts information to provide persistent protection and policy enforcement, no matter where the information resides. Liquid Machines allows or prevents actions such as reading, altering, copying and printing information according to a user's privileges defined in the policy.
In addition, Liquid Machines makes information protection a seamless part of the way work is done. For enterprises and users, Liquid Machines automates policy enforcement and hides the complexity of secure collaboration, working behind the scenes of every day business processes. Unlike other approaches to information security, Liquid Machines does not require users to modify or upgrade applications, change their work habits or move data.
How is this different than access control?
Access control is applied either on a folder or document by a file system or a document management system. It works well for users within the enterprise but it is unable to protect information once it leaves the secured environment. For example, once a file is emailed, it is accessible to anyone.
How is this different than PKI?
PKI applies a protective layer to the document, ensuring that it may travel outside the trusted environment and remain secure in transit. However, once the protection is removed (which is required to use the document), the control vanishes. Further, key management is onerous for the enterprise and users.
How is this different than "digital rights management"?
Digitial rights management technologies are often used to protect consumer content such as music and movies. Thus, these technologies often require a user to perform extra steps, such as manual encryption, or limit the ability for users to perform normal actions such as editing the document in its native application. These limitations are considered unviable for everyday usage by most users as they require the user to adjust to the software rather than software accommodating the user.
How is this different than Microsoft Rights Management Services (RMS)?
Liquid Machines is a Microsoft RMS partner that RMS-enables key business applications, speeding adoption for enterprise customers, and extends RMS to enable auditing of user actions.
What applications can I use? What about home-grown applications?
Any application works... from Microsoft Office to Open Office. Even applications developed by the enterprise can work with Liquid Machines without requiring the application to be updated.
How is Liquid Machines licensed?
Liquid Machines is a client server application licensed based on the number of named system users. For more information about how Liquid Machines can help you and your organization, Click defendit@1esc.com to receive a call from an account manager, or Call your ESC representative (949) 509-6560
What file formats are supported?
Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Visio, Adobe PDF, HTML, GIF, JPEG, TXT, RTF, XML, CSV, CUB
More information: Documents, Demos, Questions
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