Every business needs a reliable way to protect its intellectual property, as well as confidential documents and other sensitive information. This is especially true for e-commerce businesses that deal in digital media. E-commerce has been wildly growing in popularity for the past several years, and it saw an especially big boom during the height of last year’s COVID-19 pandemic. Global e-commerce sales are even expected to exceed $6.3 billion by 2024.
That’s an incredible amount of profits that your e-commerce business stands to make a part of, unless your digital assets remain unprotected, and your profits fall due to piracy or other violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). You’ll need reliable digital rights management (DRM) to protect copyrighted materials like ebooks, DVDs, and even your sensitive files from becoming victim to illegal downloads or otherwise falling into the wrong hands. Copyright holders in the digital age use DRM software to protect their materials from unauthorized use via encryption, and you’ll need to do the same. Here are just five benefits DRM technology has for e-commerce.
1. You have complete access control.
The most basic benefit of a DRM system is that you can control who has access to your digital assets, whether you’re distributing software, music, or any other data. Naturally, this includes controlling key delivery to your products, so only users who have purchased rights to your materials can actually use them.
You can also use a DRM solution to protect any sensitive documents you have, such as legal forms or financial reports. If you’re looking to make a business deal and need team members from the other business to look over documents during the due diligence process, for example, you can use DRM to lock sensitive documents and only provide decryption keys to authorized users.
2. You can set access to be revoked.
Not only can you control who’s able to access your materials in the first place, but you can also rescind access at any time. A common reason for this would be to take back any confidential documents from a virtual data room (VDR) once a business deal is complete. However, you may also decide to rescind access to a product if you find that a user is abusing your policies. You’ll even be able to block access even if the user has downloaded the materials on their PC, Android devices, or anything else.
3. You’ll be able to track activity through a simple dashboard.
The best digital rights management solution will let your track activity regarding sensitive documents or product use with real-time analytics in a simple dashboard, so you’ll be alerted to any suspicious activity. Not only that, but you can even check every time a file is viewed, downloaded, or edited in a VDR, which makes it easier to estimate the pace of business dealings.
4. You never need to worry about plugins.
Unlike with traditional document sharing platforms, the right DRM system will allow any authorized user to view documents in the browser with no need for outside plugins. This is extremely important for enterprise security since weaknesses in a plugin’s security could jeopardize everything. With an always secure connection and no other programs to worry about, your files and digital products are as safe as possible.
5. You can customize integrations with your systems.
The best DRM system will even give you the capability and freedom to create your own custom integrations with any of your business software. Is there a security feature you need that’s missing? You can either develop it or have it developed for your business with API protocols that integrate with custom applications, so your e-commerce business will always have what it needs.
