Adapting Digital Rights Management to Secure Sensitive Data

By Eric Chabrow

Could (or should) the bane of music aficionados who like to, but can't, share recordings - digital rights management - be adapted to produce another layer of protection of sensitive or classified government information?

In a phone conversation Tuesday, Jeff Nigriny, president of security provider CertiPath, raised the idea of employing the technology behind digital rights management to help secure sensitive documents. Digital rights management would be ideal in situations where a limited number of individuals need access to information.

Nigriny said the Joint Strike Fighter Program could benefit from digital rights management. JSF, as the program is known, is a joint effort by the U.S. military and nearly two dozen of our allies to define affordable, next-generation jet fighters. He says a problem our government faces is sharing sensitive and classified documents associated with JSF, even with such close friends as Britain:

"The U.S. government has not been able to get our heads around sharing the technical data with the U.K. It's not that we don't want to do it; the U.S. government has concerns that the people who would receive it in the U.K. might not have the same technical wherewithal to protect it the same way as Lockheed Martin would."
 
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