Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Telecommunications Company Boosts Security with Information Rights Management Information
Overview
Country or Region: Panama
Industry:Telecommunications
Customer Profile
Cable & Wireless Panamá is the largest telecommunications company in Panama—with more than 1,800 employees—and provides voice, data, broadband, and mobile services to more than 1 million customers.
Business Situation
Facing an elevated number of competitors (a result of deregulation), it became increasingly important for Cable & Wireless Panamá to implement a persistent way to safeguard its confidential information.
Solution
Cable & Wireless Panamá conducted a 15-participant pilot program using Microsoft® Windows® Rights Management Services (RMS) for Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 to safeguarddocuments and e-mail messages.
Benefits
Provide inherent security for confidential information
Enhance security of team collaboration / “Overall, we have been thrilled with RMS. It provides the granular level of data protection that we need to ensure that information is not being leaked beyond company walls.”
Julio Toro, Vice President of IS Applications and Projects, Cable & Wireless Panamá
As competition reached new levels, telecommunications company Cable & Wireless Panamá wanted to ensure that confidential company information was not accessed by unauthorized recipients. The company was deploying Microsoft® Office 2003, an RMS-enabled application, throughout the organization, and, consequently, the timing was perfect to conduct a pilot program for Microsoft Windows® Rights Management Services (RMS) for Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003. After a trial run during which the company applied persistent security for confidential data, Cable & Wireless Panamá has plans to roll out Windows RMS with Service Pack 1 to over 200 of its employees. Moving forward, the company also will use the technology to increase security of sensitive data on its existing, internal Web site built on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003.
Situation
Cable & Wireless Panamá is the largest telecommunications service provider in Panamá—evidenced by its customer base, which exceeds 1 million and keeps growing. Offering services that include local and long distance, mobile, Internet, and beyond, Cable & Wireless Panamá is the only telecommunications company in the country that provides a comprehensive package of communications services.
Up until 2003, Cable & Wireless Panamá was the only phone company providing fixed-line services (local and long distance) to Panama’s residents. But as deregulation rocked the United States market in 1999, a similar event occurred in Panama just four years later. Of course, the notion of a competitive market wasn’t a complete novelty to the company, as its mobile sector had been operating in an open market since 1997. Regardless, this increase in competition meant that safeguardingconfidential company information, such as marketing and pricing plans, was paramount, particularly with the enormous success that Cable & Wireless Panamá is having in increasing its customer base.
“As more companies entered the telecommunications market and competition increased, we recognized a growing need to ensure that confidential information, such as marketing and pricing plans, were protected from unauthorized viewing and access,” explains Julio Toro, Vice President of IS Applications and Projects at Cable & Wireless Panamá. “Given the size of our company and the widespread use of electronic
communications, we needed more than just a written company policy about sharing confidential information. We needed a solution that would provide built-in protection to e-mails and documents.”
Solution
Cable & Wireless Panamá was already a heavy user of Microsoft® technology and had recently extended its enterprise agreement with Microsoft for an additional three years. It was also in the process of rolling out Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 to its 1,800 employees. Given the Information Rights Management (IRM) capabilities builtinto Office 2003 Editions and the company’s need for inherent document security, the timing was perfect to participate in a pilot program for Microsoft Windows® Rights Management Services (RMS) for Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system.
Windows RMS is information securitytechnology that works with RMS–enabled applications to help safeguard digital information from unauthorized use—both online and offline, inside and outside of the firewall. IRM extends RMS functionality into Office Professional Edition 2003 and into Microsoft Internet Explorer. The powerful technology of RMS gives information workers the ability to stipulate who can open a document and specify how recipients may use that document—for example, open, modify, copy, print, or forward.
To help initiate the pilot program, Cable & Wireless Panamá joined efforts with Uruguay-based Infocorp, a business technology consulting firm and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Fifteen information workers from the IT, marketing, and wholesale departments participated in the pilot, which ran from mid-February 2005 to the end of June 2005. During this time, pilot participants assigned rights protection to information—that included marketing campaigns, pricing plans, financial documents, and e-mail messages—directly from the menu bar within the associated Office program. In addition, Cable & Wireless Panamá implemented standard usage policy templates that have fixed access rights assigned and that information workers use to safeguard information contained in e-mail messages and documents. For example, the marketing department uses a set of templates that specifically define who can access the content and that automatically prevent an e-mail recipient from printing, forwarding, or copying content. The company also is working to develop templates that include content expiration timelines, so that after a certain date, the document’s contents will no longer be accessible to recipients who formerly had permissions.
Windows RMS is deployed on a single, dedicated server running Windows Server 2003 with Internet Information Services (IIS) version 6.0. The RMS server also interacts with Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 and integrates with Active Directory® directory service, a central component of Windows Server 2003.
For the pilot, the RMS client was installed manually on each participant’s desktop. Yet, as the company moves forward with its RMS deployment (to the estimated 200 employees who work with confidential company information), it plans to use the Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 to complete the client installation. This rollout will be completed in conjunction with the ongoing Office 2003 deployment. The company will be rolling out the newest edition of RMS, RMS with Service Pack 1 (SP1).
Benefits
After conducting a highly successful pilot, Cable & Wireless Panamá was thrilled with the results. With RMS, the company easily can provide persistent securityforsensitive company information. In addition, as the company expands the RMS SP1 rollout, it is looking forward to adding an additional level of security to its Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 internal Web site.
Provide Inherent Security for Confidential Information
Given the highly competitive nature of the telecommunications industry, maintaining the securityand confidentiality of sensitive data is paramount for Cable & Wireless Panamá. With RMS, the company has the ability to rights-protect information. For example, documents and e-mail messages are encrypted, preventing unauthorized access to sensitive information.
During the pilot, the ability to safeguard digital information helped the marketing team keep confidential marketing plans hidden from unauthorized eyes. By applying persistent security formarketing information, the company is assured that it is only accessed by authorized employees.
Enhance Security of Team Collaboration
Moving forward, Cable & Wireless Panamá is looking forward to extending RMS to other groups and to using the technology to more aptly support other technology projects. For example, the company has a team Web site—based on Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003—for sharing financial, product, customer service, marketing, and IT information. While Cable & Wireless Panamá can implement user name and password protection to ensure only authorized users are accessing the internal Web site, the company didn’t want to lose control of that content once it was downloaded from the Web site onto an employee’s desktop.
“Implementing a SharePoint site requires a change in how people work,” explains Toro. “While it benefits our employees by giving them access to more content, it also adds a new level of responsibility to how this content is treated and published.”
But RMS will provide an additional layer of security to this Web site. Because information remains secure—wherever it goes—the company can maintain control over how information will be treated once it leaves the SharePoint site. This security layer does more than just safeguard information from unauthorized use, it also ensures that the information cannot be changed without approval. Consequently, there is only one version of each file, and the company gains confidence that every one of its employees is accessing the same, correct information.
Toro sums up, “Overall, we have been thrilled with RMS. It provides the granular level of data protection that we need to ensure that information is not being leaked beyond company walls.”
Windows Server 2003
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