Information rights management

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Information rights management" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page. (August 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Information rights management (IRM) is a subset of digital rights management (DRM), technologies that protect sensitive information from unauthorized access.^[1] It is sometimes referred to as E-DRM or Enterprise Digital Rights Management. This can cause confusion, because digital rights management (DRM) technologies are typically associated with business-to-consumer systems designed to protect rich media such as music and video. IRM is a technology which allows for information (mostly in the form of documents) to be ‘remote controlled’.

This means that information and its control can now be separately created, viewed, edited and distributed. A true IRM system is typically used to protect information in a business-to-business model, such as financial data, intellectual property and executive communications. IRM currently applies mainly to documents and emails.