There are many reasons why organizations of all sizes are currently facing growing demands to protect their information: increased regulation, the Consumerization of IT (CoIT) and the requirement to support “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD), the explosion of information with dispersed enterprise data, and of course, social networking and popular collaboration tools such as Facebook.

Because people can now access their email from just about anywhere on various devices, mailboxes have indeed transformed into repositories containing large amounts of potentially sensitive information. Likewise, collaboration and cloud storage solutions enable people to easily store and share information within the enterprise but also across organizations. Information leakage is therefore a serious threat, which can result in lost revenue, compromised ability to compete, unfairness in purchasing and hiring decisions, diminished customer confidence, and more. Information protection is critical.

The Microsoft Rights Management services (RMS) offering can be rapidly leveraged on-premises and/or in the Cloud to manage your information in accordance and compliance with your security and IT policies wherever it resides and goes.

Microsoft Rights Management services (RMS) help organizations keep their information secure both inside and outside their boundaries, by protecting documents both at rest and in motion. Type of file, location, and device-independent, RMS offers seamless collaboration across organizations and more.

Protect important data of any type of file, on all popular devices, and securely share that data with anyone

An unprecedented reach: Users can protect Office documents as well as PDF, TXT, XML, JPG, JPEG, TIFF, GIF, BMP, etc. Users can share these documents with others and be confident that the recipient will be able to use it on all popular devices (Windows, Windows RT, Windows Phone, Mac OS/X, iOS, and Android).
A highly scalable and available solution: RMS is available as a Software as a Service solution in the Cloud. Hosted in Windows Azure, it’s offered in the same regions as Office 365.
What can Microsoft see: Microsoft RMS never sees the data that you protect! The service only manages your policies and / distributes document-specific keys to authorized parties, both internal and external to your organization. Optional capabilities enable you to control your keys from your on-premises infrastructure.
A trusted hub for secure collaboration: By leveraging Windows Azure Active Directory, RMS acts as a trusted hub for secure collaboration where organizations can securely share information with other organizations without additional setup or configuration. The other organizations may be existing RMS users or leverage the free ‘RMS for individuals’ capability.
Microsoft Rights Management services provide:
Protection / • Supports any type of file
• Supports all the popular devices with both the SDKs and the Microsoft Rights Management Sharing applications available on 6 platforms
• Free consumption of rights-protected content
Collaboration / • Works with leading on-premises and cloud-based Microsoft applications
• Supports hybrid scenarios with the Rights Management (RMS) connector
• Built onto Windows Azure Active Directory for seamless use with cloud applications and secure collaboration with any important people in a user’s collaboration circle
• SDKs available on 6 platforms for integration with custom applications
• Reliable, scalable service supports high-volume, mission-critical scenarios
Control / • Keeps specific sensitive information on-premises
• Flexibility of maintaining policies across the various storage classes
• Controlling the RMS keys from on-premises with the ‘Bring-Your-Own-Key’ (BYOK) capability with Thales e-Security HSM
• Nearly real-time reporting and logging for auditing
• Extend with partner collaboration for a complete Information Protection and Control (IPC) solution that complies with HIPAA, GLBA, and other regulatory requirements

Turn it on in your Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions

Easy to set up, organizations can start protecting data within minutes of when they subscribe to Office 365. No on-premises infrastructure is required. RMS is already included in the Office 365 Enterprise E3, and E4 plans and the Education A3 and A4 plans. RMS is also available as an add-on in the E1 and A2 plans. Integrated within Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Office ProPlus, users use applications and services they are already familiar with today. RMS enables secure collaboration by default within Office 365 tenants. Consumption of rights-protected content is free, using the ‘RMS for individuals’ capability if needed.

Turn it on for on-premises and hybrid scenarios with the RMS connector

The RMS connector quickly enables existing on-premises servers, such as Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft SharePoint, to use their Information Rights Management (IRM) functionality with the cloud-hosted RMS service. After it is installed and configured, the RMS connector acts as a communications interface between the on-premises IRM-enabled servers and RMS. The RMS connector enables hybrid scenarios between on-premises server deployments and the cloud-based Microsoft RMS with or without Office 365.

Protect and Share information with the Microsoft RMS Sharing app

The best RMS experience is achieved with RMS-enlightened applications such as Microsoft Office 2013. Outside RMS-enlightened applications, a user can protect any type of file by using the RMS sharing app, an enlightened application itself, in Windows as well as in the most popular mobile devices. The capability enables a user to protect a document in place or to share a protected version, and is integrated into mobile devices with the ability to take protected photos with mobile devices that have cameras.

Build it into your applications

Software Development Kits (SDK) help you enable a direct integration with your applications on all popular devices and your cloud services. The SDKs protect the data within the runtime environment they are executing. This is usually a computer (Windows or Mac) or a mobile device (Windows RT, Windows Phone, iOS, or Android). This can also be a Windows Server-based service or any value-add offering (e.g. Data Leakage Prevention) via the RESTful service APIs. The SDKs facilitate most of the protection flows and take care of all the initialization for you.