IP Geofencing With Methodics IPLM
IP geofencing is a critical part of your IP strategy. Why? Your IP portfolio is probably leaking.
When it comes to IP security, you need a three-pronged approach:
- Preventing IP leakage by protecting your IP from unauthorized use, editing, or viewing by implementing regional protections with IP geofencing.
- IP security assurance: making sure your IP is not prone to hacking and other malicious activity.
- The secure transfer of IP through the use of blockchain.
This blog will focus on the first pillar listed above — IP geofencing.
What Is IP Geofencing?
IP geofencing is a security measure that restricts IP availability by geography, regardless of a user’s access permissions. Think of it as a virtual perimeter around a given location.
Why Geofencing Is Important For IP Portfolios
IP portfolios can be massive. With portfolios of that size, protective measures need to be put into place to prevent leaks. These leaks can be through malicious intent as well as accidental leaks.
Organizations also need to ensure that they are able to protect IP via use models. This entails user permissions, where certain individuals may only have read access to IP, others may only have write access to it, etc.
Additionally, IP needs to have geographic protections, such that IP does not get transferred to parts of the world where it is restricted. This geographic protection needs to overrule user permissions, whereby even if somebody has access to the IP, they cannot access it from restricted regions if they are traveling.
How Many Millions Are You Willing to Set Aside to Address IP Leakage?
Learn more in our white paper and webinar.
How to Prevent Leaks With IP Geofencing
Before you even get into geofencing, IP security requires a strong foundation in access controls first. Even if you use multiple, disjointed systems across the enterprise for access controls at the IP-level. This creates a single place for all access information to come together in a “permissions hub.”
With the permissions hub:
- Each IP has the correct read/write permissions.
- Regional permissions can be applied to the IP.
- Metadata is also protected with read/write permissions.
From this foundational support, you can now start looking at how you protect your IP around the world. IP geofencing allows companies to create different regions of the world and assign regional IP protections to their portfolio. This keeps the IP from both accidental and malicious export to regions where that IP cannot move to.
The reason this is important is because of the hierarchical nature of IP. You might build a piece of IP that can be exported, but if you unintentionally include in your IP tree a small piece of IP that is protected, you may run the risk of exporting protected IP because it is part of a larger tree.
The solution to stopping this unintentional leakage is by promoting restrictions through the IP hierarchy: if there is protected IP in the hierarchy, Methodics IPLM has the ability to apply this restriction within the larger system.
But, you still have to allow for collaboration. There may be individuals in other design groups that may not have access to certain IP but still need to collaborate on a larger design while still protecting IP. Methodics IPLM has the ability to build partial workspaces which allows designers to build their workspace with all the IP they have access, but not populate the workspace with protected IP, allowing them to collaborate with other designers around the world.
Leverage IP Geofencing Today
Protecting your IP requires a comprehensive system, and it cannot be solved by any single action. IP geofencing builds on foundational IP security by adding regional restrictions for IP availability, regardless of the user's access permissions.
For a closer look at how Methodics IPLM leverages IP geofencing as part of a three-pronged approach to securing your IP, view our on-demand webinar IP Security: Protecting Your Most Important IP Assets With Methodics IPLM.
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