New Enterprise Rights Management Report Finds A Rise In Adoption As Companies Look For Ways To Protect Vital Content

HERNDON, Va. --(Business Wire)-- GigaTrust, the market leader in providing cutting-edge email security and content protection software products that enhance and extend Microsoft's Windows Rights Management Services (RMS), today announced the release of the most comprehensive research report to date on the Enterprise Rights Management (ERM) market. The report, Enterprise Rights Management: Business Imperatives and Implementation Readiness, reveals that ERM adoption is on a path of explosive growth.

The survey highlights how ERM is beginning to be viewed not only as a benefit to an organization, but also as a business opportunity. Barriers to implementation are eroding as executives are becoming more familiar with the benefits of the technology. The report was commissioned in part by GigaTrust and was conducted by the Gilbane Group with the assistance of the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

"This survey validates what our customers have been saying for a while now and the direction in which we have taken our products," said Brad Gandee, vice president of Product Management at GigaTrust. "With close to 70% of respondents saying that ERM deployment can help achieve their company's business objectives, this report shows that there is tremendous potential in the ERM market as customers learn about our technology."

Of the respondents who indicated that they have implemented ERM in their organizations, half said that the implementation was across the whole enterprise. The most often-cited reason for ERM implementation, by 25% of respondents, was to protect confidential information from leaking outside of the enterprise. Complying with industry regulations or standards was also cited as a significant reason for adoption of ERM, with Sarbanes-Oxley (24%) and the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (18%) cited as the two primary compliance vehicles.

Additional key findings from Enterprise Rights Management Research report include:

• Awareness of ERM has increased over the past few years. 8% of respondents have never heard of ERM. In a survey conducted in 2005*, 26% of respondents had never heard of ERM.
• Along with regulatory compliance, respondents cited three types of business processes involving confidential information that were the most prevalent for ERM implementations: client/customer communications, financial processes, and medical patient care.
• Large proportions of respondents' organizations are implementing (or will implement) ERM integrated with content management systems (CMS) or some variant of content management technology, such as knowledge management or collaboration. Twenty-five percent have implemented compared to 9% in 2005. In both studies 34% plan to implement.
• For those that have not implemented yet, only 12% claimed that there was insufficient business justification or executive sponsorship.

"The survey results indicate that ERM is on a strong path of steady growth," said Bill Rosenblatt, Senior Analyst, Publishing Strategy & Technology Practice with the Gilbane Group and the Report's lead author. "As IT managers and organizations become more comfortable with the uses, applications and advantages of the technology, ERM will play bigger part in corporate security infrastructure."

As ERM progresses into a must-have security approach, GigaTrust continues to build its email and content security software products to adhere to the complex regulatory compliance and corporate governance requirements that many organizations face. GigaTrust's tools provide support for organizations of any size, securing content in multiple file formats like PDF and across all means of content/document distribution - such as web portals like Microsoft's SharePoint and mobile devices like BlackBerry.

Results are based on an online survey of 212 respondents from IT, security and content management executives from a wide range of industries including: information technology, professional services, and financial services/insurance, among others. The respondents were culled from Gilbane Group's subscribership and input from the survey's sponsors. The survey was conducted online under management by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Data were compiled and analyzed throughout spring 2008, and has an overall margin of error of +/- 6% with 95% confidence.

To read the full report, please go to http://gigatrust.ondialog.com/EnterpriseRightsManagement Gilbane/.

* * 2005 survey was conducted by Sage Research. The survey is no longer available, but highlights are available at http://www.drmwatch.com/drmtech/print.php/3567756

About GigaTrust

GigaTrust is a cutting-edge provider of email and content security software products serving customers in both the public and private sectors. GigaTrust is the only provider of the Intelligent Rights Management(TM) solution, which combines innovative, next-generation content security technologies built on the foundation of Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services. GigaTrust's Intelligent Rights Management solution enables secure anyone-to-anyone collaboration by persistently protecting content (at rest, in transit, or in use).

GigaTrust's family of products/services are easy to use, easy to deploy, and completely transparent to the author or recipient of the email or content. GigaTrust's products/services include security solutions for email and document protection, automated external user provisioning, web content, network file shares, e-discovery enablement, and the Blackberry mobile device. GigaTrust is headquartered in Herndon, Va., and with regional offices throughout the United States and is a Microsoft Gold Partner. For more information about GigaTrust, visit http://www.GigaTrust.com.

About Gilbane Group

Gilbane Group Inc. is an analyst and consulting firm that has been writing and consulting about the strategic use of content and information technologies since 1987. Clients include organizations of all sizes from a wide variety of industries and governments. Gilbane works with the entire community of stakeholders including investors, enterprise buyers of IT, technology suppliers, and other consultant and analyst firms. Gilbane has organized over 50 educational conferences in North America and Europe. Its widely read newsletter, reports, white papers, case studies and analyst blogs are available at http://gilbane.com.

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