Azure Rights Management: A Comprehensive Guide to Data Protection

Azure Rights Management is a powerful tool for protecting sensitive data in the cloud. It allows you to encrypt and control access to sensitive information, ensuring it remains confidential and secure.

By using Azure Rights Management, you can protect sensitive data from unauthorized access, whether it's in transit or at rest. This includes emails, documents, and other digital assets.

Azure Rights Management uses advanced encryption and access control policies to safeguard your data. This means that even if an unauthorized user gains access to your data, they won't be able to read or use it without the right permissions.

With Azure Rights Management, you can also track and monitor who has accessed your sensitive data, and when. This provides valuable insights into how your data is being used and helps you identify potential security risks.

Azure Rights Management is a cloud-based protection technology used by Azure Information Protection. It safeguards files and emails across devices, including phones, tablets, and PCs, using encryption, identity, and authorization policies.

Azure RMS helps secure information even when it leaves your organization's boundaries. This means your data's protection settings stay with it, keeping your content safe both within and outside your organization.

Continuous protection is one of the key features of Azure RMS. This ensures that your data is secure, even when shared with others.

Here are some scenarios where Azure RMS is necessary:

Azure RMS also ensures that authorized individuals and services can continue to read and inspect the secured data. This includes search and indexing, maintaining control of your organization's data.

Azure Rights Management allows you to safeguard any form of material, with no limits on the file type.

You can protect the entire email message if it includes sensitive information inside the email body, as well as allowing you to activate the “Do Not Forward” option from in Outlook.

The Azure Rights Management service has user onboarding controls, allowing you to control which users can use it to protect content. For more information, see the Configuring onboarding controls for a phased deployment section in the Activating the protection service from Azure Information Protection article.

Individual subscriptions are available to sign up for the free Azure Rights Management plan, and you can also choose to enable Azure Rights Management if you have a service plan that includes it.

Azure RMS is a data protection service that doesn't see or keep your data, unless you intentionally store it in Azure or use another cloud service that saves it there.

The data is encrypted at the application tier, and a policy that defines the document's approved use is included.

Here's a high-level overview of how it works: an authorized user or service successfully opens a document containing sensitive information after it's been secured, with a content key protecting the document and a tenant root key protecting the content key.

The content key is unique to each document and is stored in the file header, where the tenant root key protects it.

Azure Rights Management is a data protection service that encrypts and protects sensitive information, but it doesn't store your data unless you intentionally save it in Azure. This means you can be confident that only authorized users can access the protected files.

The service works by encrypting data at the application tier and including a policy that defines the document's approved use. This policy is enforced when the document is used by a legitimate user or processed by an authorized service.

You can safeguard any form of material with Azure Rights Management, including files of any type, and there are no limits on the file type. This makes it a versatile tool for protecting sensitive information.

If someone tries to print a protected document, you'll receive a notification immediately, giving you an added layer of control over how your sensitive information is used.

To control which users can use Azure RMS to protect content, you can use the user onboarding controls provided by the service. This allows you to manage who has access to the protection features and ensures that only authorized users can safeguard sensitive information.

Here are some key features of Azure Rights Management:

Windows Server FCI has historically been an option to classify documents and then protect them, but we now recommend using the Azure Information Protection scanner. It's a more modern and efficient solution.

The Azure Information Protection scanner uses the Azure Information Protection client and your Azure Information Protection policy to label documents, so they're then classified and optionally protected. This approach is more flexible and effective.

Here's a comparison of the two solutions:

The Azure Information Protection scanner is a better choice for most organizations, as it's more flexible and can handle a wider range of data stores and file types.

Creating and managing templates is a crucial part of Azure Rights Management. You can create a new custom template in the Azure portal by creating a new label and configuring the data protection settings for Azure RMS.

To create a new template, create a new label and configure the data protection settings for Azure RMS. Under the covers, this creates a new template that can then be accessed by services and applications that integrate with Rights Management templates.

You can also change the group membership to include or exclude users and there is no need to change the label or template. There might be a small delay before the changes take effect because group membership is cached by the Azure Rights Management service.

If the document was protected by using custom permissions, you cannot change the permissions for the existing document. You must protect the document again and specify all the users and all the usage rights that are required for this new version of the document.

To check whether a document was protected by a template or by using custom permission, use the Get-AIPFile​Status PowerShell cmdlet. You always see a template description of Restricted Access for custom permissions, with a unique template ID that is not displayed when you run Get-RMSTemplate.

Here are some key things to keep in mind when managing templates:

With Azure Rights Management (RMS), you can share protected files with confidence, knowing that only authorized people can access them. You can attach protected files to emails or store them on a SharePoint shared link, and even protect the entire email message if it includes sensitive information inside the email body.

The "Do Not Forward" option allows you to control who can forward the email to someone else, ensuring that the email or attached files cannot be read beyond the initial recipient.

Collaboration with other organizations is also made easy with Azure RMS. If another organization uses Office 365 or an Azure AD Directory, collaboration is automatically supported. This means you don't need to set up a secure way of working with them beforehand.

If another organization doesn't use either of these platforms, they can sign up for RMS using an individual subscription for free, or use a Microsoft account for applications that support Azure Information Protection.

With Azure RMS, you can easily scale your information protection across your organization, without the need to deploy more servers. This cloud-based service automatically scales up and out, so you can enjoy a protected shared environment, both internally and externally.

Azure Rights Management is a cloud-based service that automatically scales up and out to handle increased workloads, eliminating the need to deploy more servers.

This means you can easily extend information protection across your organization, both internally and externally, without worrying about infrastructure constraints.

The service scales automatically, so you don't need to worry about manually adjusting resources to meet changing demands.

Azure RMS is a cloud-based service that automatically scales up and out, so your company doesn’t need to deploy more servers to cover the additional workload.

This means you can easily extend information protection across your organization, giving you a protected shared environment both internally and externally.

With automatic scaling, you can take advantage of a secure environment without worrying about the technical details.

You can scale your organization as needed, without having to manually deploy more servers to handle the increased burden.

Microsoft Azure Rights Management automatically scales up and down, eliminating the need for your firm to deploy more servers to handle the increased workload.

Support for On-Premises and Office 365 is a key feature of Azure RMS.

Azure RMS can be used by on-premises services such as Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Windows servers running the File Classification Service (File Servers).

Office 365 services can and do work seamlessly with Azure RMS.

On-premises services, including Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Windows servers running the File Classification Service, can use Azure RMS.

Office 365 services can integrate with Azure RMS without any issues.

With Azure RMS, you can easily extend information protection across your organization, both internally and externally.

Designing and deploying simple policies is key to a successful Azure Rights Management deployment. This approach allows you to be ambitious with your data protection reach, but be conservative when configuring rights usage restrictions.

Restricting access to people within your organization can have a significant business impact by preventing data leakage. Consider preventing people from printing or editing sensitive documents, but use these more restrictive usage rights as an exception for documents that require high-level security.

By integrating Azure Rights Management with both on-premises and Office 365 services, you can ensure seamless data protection across your organization. This includes support for Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Windows servers running the File Classification Service, as well as Office 365 services.

Azure RMS supports business-to-business collaboration, automatically working with other organisations that use Office 365 or an Azure AD Directory.

If an organisation isn't using Office 365 or an Azure AD Directory, they can sign up for RMS using an individual subscription for free, or use a Microsoft account for applications that support this type of authentication for Azure Information Protection.

Azure RMS can be used by on-premises services such as Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Windows servers running the File Classification Service (File Servers).

Office 365 services can seamlessly integrate with Azure RMS, making it a great option for organisations that use both on-premises and cloud-based services.

On-premises services, including Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Windows servers running the File Classification Service, can use Azure RMS (File Servers) without any issues.

Auditing and monitoring are crucial for organisations to track and manage protected data. They can do this by keeping an eye on who's accessing, modifying, or printing sensitive files.

If you share protected files with other companies, you can see if they open them and when. This is especially useful if you're working on a project together and need to keep track of who's accessing what.

Audit logs help you identify if non-authorised users have tried to access protected files. This can happen when you forward emails with attachments or save protected files in shared folders accessible by external users.

You'll be quickly notified if someone tries to modify or print protected files with read-only permissions. This feature helps prevent accidental or intentional data breaches.

By tracking and revoking access to shared files, you can keep your data safe and secure. You can also generate reports to see how files were shared and who accessed them.

When deploying Azure Rights Management, it's essential to design and deploy simple policies. This approach allows you to be ambitious with your data protection reach while keeping things conservative when configuring rights usage restrictions.

Designing simple policies helps prevent data leakage by restricting access to people within your organization, which is often the biggest business impact. You can get more granular with restrictions if needed, but keep these exceptions for documents that require high-level security.

To activate Azure Rights Management, you don't need to do anything if you purchased a subscription after February 28, 2018, and the service would automatically activate. However, if you purchased a subscription before or during February 2018, you need to check if the service is already activated.

If your tenant uses Exchange Online, Microsoft will activate the Azure Rights Management service for you, but you need to check if AutomaticServiceUpdateEnabled is set to false. If neither of these circumstances applies to you, you must manually activate the protection service.

Once the service is active, all users in your company can apply information protection to their documents and emails. You can also use onboarding controls for a phased deployment to limit who can apply for information protection.