Information Rights Management (IRM) helps to control and protect digital documents by limiting the actions that users can take on documents that have been downloaded from SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business document libraries and lists. IRM encrypts the downloaded files and limits the set of users and programs that are allowed to decrypt these files, as well as limits the rights of the users who are allowed to read files, so that they cannot take actions such as print copies of the files or copy text from them. With IRM, administrators also have the ability to do the following:
- Set document access rights, including rights to print, run scripts to enable screen readers or enable writing on a copy of the document
- Set expiration date (the date after which the document cannot be used)
- Control whether documents that do not support IRM protection can be included in the library
- Control whether Office Web Apps can render the documents in the library
