One thing an Information Rights Management technology should do well is separate out three main areas of responsibility.

• The business process of defining and controlling the classifications to which content is secured and the definition of the roles employees, customers, partners and contractors have when accessing secured content.

In amongst all the end of year activity we've been able to start the creation of some new YouTube video's of the Oracle IRM 11g release. First on the agenda was to show the core features of Oracle IRM with the new 11g server.

We also created a demonstration of the simple ways content can be secured without any training on the end users part and without impacting their existing day to day practice of using sensitive information. Have a look at this video...

A recurring theme you'll find throughout this blog is that IRM needs to balance security with usability and manageability. One of the innovations in Oracle IRM 11g typifies this, as we have introduced a new right that may be included in any role - Accessibility.

When creating or modifying a role, you simply select Accessibility along with Open, Print, Edit or whatever rights you want to include in the role.

Among the many enhancements in IRM 11g, we have introduced a couple of new rights expiry options that may be applied to any role. These options were supported in previous versions, but fell into the "advanced configuration" category. In 11g, the options can be applied simply by selecting a check-box in the properties of a role, as shown by the rather extreme example below, where the role allows access for just two minutes after they are sealed.