Dynamic Rights Management Policy Application
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current rights management systems require manual effort from senders to apply protection policies, leading to non-compliance and inefficiencies in content expiration and storage management, as expired content remains persistently available and contributes to storage bloat.
Innovation Solution
An administrator can dynamically apply rights management policies based on senders, recipients, message attributes, and environmental factors, with automatic updating and deletion of expired content through a message transfer agent, ensuring secure and efficient content management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If manual rights management protection is applied by senders, then content security is improved, but user compliance and operational ease deteriorate due to the complexity of hoops users must jump through
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables self-service by allowing senders to automatically apply rights management policies without manual intervention. The sender composes a message and selects a protection level, then the system automatically applies the appropriate rights management policy, eliminating the need for users to manually configure complex security settings while maintaining strong content protection.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements preliminary action by pre-configuring multiple rights management policies with different protection levels before users need them. Administrators can define these policies in advance based on various criteria (confidentiality levels, recipient groups, time restrictions), so when a sender wants to protect content, they simply select from pre-defined options rather than creating policies from scratch.
2Reliability
If content expiration is implemented in rights management systems, then security is improved by limiting access time, but storage efficiency deteriorates as expired content remains persistently available causing storage bloat
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements dynamics by making content storage status changeable based on expiration conditions. Content is dynamically retained during its valid period for security purposes, then automatically deleted when expired. The message transfer agent continuously monitors for expired content and removes it, creating a dynamic storage management system that adapts to time-based security requirements while maintaining storage efficiency.
3Reliability
If dynamic rights management policy application is implemented, then compliance and security are improved, but system complexity increases requiring automated monitoring and updating mechanisms
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements feedback by establishing a continuous monitoring loop where the message transfer agent checks messages for expiration status and automatically updates or deletes expired content. This feedback mechanism ensures compliance with rights management policies without requiring complex manual intervention, as the system self-corrects by monitoring its own state and taking appropriate actions.
Solution Approach 2:
The message transfer agent serves as an intermediary between the rights management system and stored messages. It mediates the automatic detection of expired content and executes the appropriate actions (deletion or updating), simplifying the overall system architecture by centralizing the monitoring and enforcement functions in a dedicated component rather than distributing complexity across multiple systems.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed is a method for dynamically applying a rights management policy to a message by allowing an administrator to associate certain rights management policies with certain senders and recipients of messages, with groups of users possessing certain common criteria which define the users and groups of users, with certain attributes of the message, and with certain environmental attributes. Also disclosed is a method for allowing an administrator to automatically update a rights management protected message as it passes through a message transfer agent. The administrator may determine either on a regular interval or an ad-hoc basis that the message transfer agent scan the messages stored to determine whether or not the content has expired. If the content has indeed expired the administrator may take steps to have the expired content deleted entirely, refreshed with more current content, or replaced with a tombstone indicating that the original content has expired.