Approach

Absio Design Challenge

The challenge was to engineer a solution that provides the owner of any form of digital information or content the ability to retain control of their information regardless of where or how it has been distributed.

According to conventional wisdom, once information or content is distributed in digital form, its very nature makes it inherently impossible to control. That’s just nonsense.

The content objects (bundles of ones and zeroes) that make up digital media (text, audio, video, and software) are not immediately usable. They must be manipulated by software to be created, consumed or moved. Current media distribution technologies were not engineered to provide persistent ownership or distribution control. They were engineered to enable the unconstrained distribution of information. Contrary to conventional wisdom, digital information is inherently controllable if the software that creates, moves, and renders it is engineered to provide control.  

Rational Information Marketplace

Absio is designed to be a global-scale platform that supports a rational information marketplace. In the physical world, a rational economy must ensure owners with basic property rights, accountability, confidentiality, and conformance to applicable law to control its use and recource if it is stolen or misused. The current information economy does not provide this. Absio is designed to make participating in the digital marketplace, safe, reliable and profitable.

Absio Concert

• Irrevocably binds controls to the information itself.
• Provides storage and communications services to applications that enable authorized applications and users to access content without bypassing controls.
• Does not allow unauthorized applications or users to access the content. 

Absio Solutions Requirements

Control requirements:

• Enforce ownership of the information.
• Legitimize the distribution universe—support only authenticated applications and users, and make no provision for system-level anonymity.
• Control initial distribution (where information goes) and redistribution (what users can do with it).
• Retain control on lost or stolen devices (information at rest) and on compromised networks (information in motion).
• Provide automatic, unalterable and comprehensive audit of information movement and use.

Technical implementation requirements:

• Lightweight application that runs on current operating systems and a wide range of devices. 
• Fully functional offline (secure local store and rich client application).
• Support secure synchronization so that users can have the information they need on the device they are using at the moment.

Adoption requirements:

• Available to upgrade current applications or build new applications.
• Incrementally implementable so that organizations can secure their information based on real-world priorities and budgets.
• Initial implementation must require little or no change to current application user interfaces.
• Ensure an affordable solution.