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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Simon Parkin, Professor Aad van Moorsel
This report surveys existing enterprise technologies and products available to control access to confidential digital data. We survey USB access control solutions, digital rights management software, disk encryption techniques and operating system solutions. We compare the various technologies with respect to granularity and extent of administrative control, platform coverage, user education features, and accommodation of data use outside the boundaries of the company network. The researched technologies allow restrictions to be placed on copying, editing, viewing and printing from within various software applications, provide auditing options and prevent outsider access through encryption. Several of the mentioned technologies offer training and education options, informing users as to the reasoning of access control events as they occur and educating them about the permissions that apply to them. A serious drawback of many of the technologies is the central administration it requires. We are interested in cost trade-off, to be able to make trust-economic decisions. The cost of software deployment is linked to the features that each product provides, where finer granularity of device and file content control, encryption and user education implies that per-user purchase cost increases.
Author(s): Parkin SE, van Moorsel A
Publication type: Report
Publication status: Published
Series Title: School of Computing Science Technical Report Series
Year: 2007
Pages: 34
Print publication date: 01/10/2007
Source Publication Date: October 2007
Report Number: 1056
Institution: School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Place Published: Newcastle upon Tyne
URL: http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/publications/trs/papers/1056.pdf