Towards a framework for securing a document outside an organisational firewall

Electronic documents within any enterprise are an asset and securing these assets is a priority, since each year organizations losses billions in Intellectual Property (IP) due to document leakage. The challenge is that electronic documents cannot be fully protected outside the originators enterprise network with exception of a small number of propriety solutions. The solution presented in this paper proposes a framework to produce intelligent documents that can be programmed to detect its location within a network and be involved in the decisions process for basic operation (read, edit, and copy). Therefore, the document should maintain its integrity by preventing content modification. The framework incorporates active intelligent document concepts operating under Digital Right Management (DRM) to provide a measure of security for electronic documents beyond the boundaries of organizations supported by our illustration.