Exchange 2013 with Rights Management Connector

Windows Rights Management Services (also known as Rights Management Services, Active Directory Rights Management Services or simply RMS) is a form of Information Rights Management used on Microsoft Windows that uses encryption and a form of selective functionality denial in order to limit access to information, such as e-mails or Word documents for example, and enforce what operations authorized users can perform on them.

Users can use this technology to encrypt information stored in such document formats, and through policies embedded in these, prevent the protected content from being decrypted except by specified people or groups, under certain conditions, and even for certain periods of time. Specific operations such as printing, copying, editing, forwarding and deleting can be allowed or disallowed by the author.

 

Rights Management Server first debuted in 2005 as an add-on to Windows Server 2003, with client API libraries made available for Windows XP and Windows 2000. With Windows Server 2008, it was renamed to Active Directory Rights Management Services [ADRMS], reflecting its higher level of integration with AD.

The next big “upgrade” was in July 2013 when Microsoft released a preview of Azure Rights Management which allows organizations to protect their data in Office 365. Azure RMS is included with E3, E4, A3 and A4 plans at no additional cost, or it can be purchased as a standalone subscription.

 

For organizations that are in the process of migrating to Office 365 there is a feature called RMS Connector that enables protected content to work with an organization’s online services as well as on-premises servers.

 

RMS connector lets administrators enable existing on-premises servers, such as Exchange, SharePoint or even file servers running Windows Server to use their Information Rights Management [IRM] functionality with the cloud-based RMS. With this functionality, IT and users can easily protect information both inside and outside the organization, without having to install additional infrastructure or establish trust relationships with other organizations.

The RMS connector is a small-footprint service that is installed on-premises on servers that run Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012 or 2012 R2. After installed and configured, it acts as a communications interface (a relay) between the on-premises IRM-enabled servers and the cloud service.

To read the entire article, please check Exchange 2013 with Rights Management Connector on MSExchange.org.