Content Security Boosts E-Commerce

Staff -- Graphic Arts Online, 11/1/2000

By 2002, more than 60% of enterprises adopting e-commerce will use some content security tools or services, such as digital rights management, according to a recent Gartner Group presentation.

"The market for secure content delivery over the Internet is just emerging," says Alan Weintraub, research director for Gartner. "Routing electronic content securely with encryption, delivery certification, and audit trails will allow businesses many benefits, including faster client service and supplier interaction."

Digital rights management technologies are targeting the music and book industries first as they migrate from traditional distribution of physical media to new on-line methods of selling electronic content.

The technology offers these publishers and enterprises the ability to control and protect the distribution of their content, and thereby maintain their revenue associated with that content.

"Until the advent of digital rights management technology, many content distributors viewed the Web as only offering what they most feared: uncontrolled access to valuable content," Weintraub says. "With this technology, the Web becomes a channel that allows all types of electronic content to be distributed and protected in a controlled manner."

Digital rights management applications will have significant effects on the business-to-business (B2B) as well as business-to-consumer (B2C) markets, Gartner says.