IRM (Information Rights Management) in SharePoint

This is just a very brief review from my reading of a MS white paper coming with the ECM starter kit.

IRM allows you to have control over a document after it’s downloaded from SharePoint.

This is how is works:

• You need to install/configure IRM at server farm first
• You can configure the Doc Lib to use certain IRM policy (such as No Print, or downloaded copy expires after x days). This policy applies to whole doc lib and you can’t customized at folder level.
• Nothing important happens when you upload a file
• When a support file (you have to install the “protector” for this file type. MOSS 2007 has word, excel, and powerpoint covered) is being downloaded, WSS will encrypt it and send you back the encrypted version.
• You need a IRM-ready viewer to view these files (Office 2003 is fine), or you need to install necessary components for your viewer.
• Your local viewer need to connect to a “Windows Rights management Services” server to decrypt the file.

For Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, meta data are not encrypted.

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