Quantitative Evaluation of Enterprise DRM Technology

It is of critical business importance for organizations to keep confidential digital documents secure, as the potential cost and damage incurred from the loss of confidential digital documents have increased significantly in recent years. Digital Rights Management (DRM) was developed to help organizations keep digital documents secure, as one of many digital information security solutions. In this study, the functions of eight popular DRM products currently available on the market are reviewed, and the impact of using of these DRM products is evaluated quantitatively. A group of security metrics are defined as a means of measuring the impact of using DRM systems. The metrics reflect the incorporate potential costs and impact to the organization incurred by implementing DRM products. Stochastic models are used to quantitatively evaluate the costs and impact of implementing a particular DRM product. In this study, it is found that although DRM products protect digital assets by encryption and by providing a central control on information within the organization, this comes at a cost, since these security mechanisms typically reduce the productivity of the staff. The reduction in productivity is in turn measured in the form of non-productive time (NPT) which is an inherent part of the stochastic modeling process.