elearning security - the protection of elearning courses from intellectual property theft

NetMasterClass case study Elearning Security: Protecting training courses from intellectual property theft so they can be securely distributed via the Internet Summary NetMasterClass (NMC) need to be able to deliver their proprietary Cisco training courses anytime, anywhere, over the Internet. They had previously had the unfortunate experience of seeing their training materials posted on public web sites, effectively giving away the work and expertise that they had used to create new and novel training techniques. After reviewing other potential DRM providers they selected LockLizard as the most cost-effective way of enabling them to move forwards. "The return on investment to our company has been immediately evident. We are now creating new products for our electronic portfolio without fear of seeing them being distributed through unauthorized channels." Introducing NMC NetMasterClass (NMC) was founded in 2001 by Bruce Caslow and Val Pavlichenko, who, for the previous five years before founding NMC, had worked as CCIE training professionals with other Cisco Learning Partners. Once formed, NMC quickly emerged as a leading Cisco training provider, becoming a Cisco Certified Learning Partner in 2005. From its inception NMC has only offered expert level training using proprietary training materials, methods and techniques developed by NMC. The drivers that made us go to DRM for our electronic courses This is best described by an actual situation that happened to us that alerted us to the need for a security product. Our company developed a particular on-line training course (very expensive to develop). The costs of the development of our courses have to be recouped from a long term sale of the class to many customers in order to make the course affordable. Two days after the class was released we found the class being offered for sale on e-bay by a company that we had never heard of before. That blew away both the costs of our development, and any sales going forwards, in one single hit. So unless we took positive steps to protect our courses (IPR) we were going to find it difficult to stay in business. Up until then we hadn't considered using DRM because we figured our niche was not likely to be attacked and we had heard that the use of any security product was too complicated for the end user. Why we chose LockLizard as our supplier We needed the ability to serve a large number of users accessing several different products simultaneously, requiring reasonable security, and at an affordable cost. Ease of use for the end user was key to the decision making. After a detailed review of the available products in the marketplace, LockLizard was the clear leader in the field for content protection, so selecting them was easy.
© LockLizard Ltd 2008 NetMasterClass case study - elearning security Page 1 of 3 The features and functions that mattered to us As with most learning providers, we found that we must be able to offer our training courses with any time, any where, availability - across the Internet. LockLizard is the perfect solution for securing the content so that only the user that purchased the course has access to it. Our elearning products are built from a rich mixture of formats, including PDF, Flash and HTML. We found that LockLizard DRM products suited our needs and fitted easily into the style of our online training courses. Implementing with LockLizard If only the implementation of all new services could go this smoothly. The LockLizard team was wonderful. By making sure that we understood the preliminary work (securing the products with the right structure) was done correctly, we were able to release the secured products as soon as the implementation work was completed. Customer responses Our customers completely understand the need for security of our products, and we have had very few complaints or problems. In instances where we had questions, the LockLizard support team was right there to help. Describe the ROI you actually achieved The return on investment to our company has been immediately evident. We are now creating new products for our electronic portfolio without fear of seeing them being distributed through unauthorized channels. That means we can achieve the ROI we need both to pay for course development and improvements, and that the people who use the c... [download for more]