INTRODUCTION

An Information System can be defined as a set of interrelated components that collect or retrieve, process, store and distribute information to support decision making and control in an organization (Laudon & Laudon, 2005). This information is usually expected to be kept confidential within the organization. If in any case this information gets into the wrong hands, the organization may need to prove legally that this information was theirs to
begin with.

Intellectual property is defined as an intangible property created by individuals or organizations that are subject to afore mentioned form of protection (Laudon & Laudon, 2005). Intellectual property is a very valuable asset to individual, businesses, etc, but hard to protect due to the fact that it is intangible. Tools which have been used are referred to as digital rights management (DRM) tools.

An organization’s information are usually stored in different media, such as digital media like audio, video, images, paper documents and other forms of multimedia. As with many other aspects of society, every organization’s information can be subject to various forms of protection, which can be classified as legal and technological protections. Trade secret, copyright, and patent law provide legal protections to intellectual properties. Trade
secret refers to any intellectual work or product used by a business, given that it is the company’s original idea (Laudon & Laudon, 2004). Examples of trade secrets include customer identities and preferences, product pricing, marketing strategies, vendors, company finances, manufacturing processes and other competitively valuable information.
Statutory grants given to creators of intellectual property are referred to as copyright. This right prevents the intellectual property from being copied or used without permission over the lifetime of the creator plus an additional 70 or 95 years after the death of the author, depending on the status of the copyright holder, which can either be individual or corporate holder (Laudon & Laudon, 2004).

Patents are legal documents that give the creator of an invention the sole right to make, use, and sell that invention for a period of about 17 – 20 years. The major difference between patents, copyrights, and trade secrets is that patents and copyrights allow the exposure of the organizations’ intellectual property, trade secrets enables them to keep the information secret. Due to the advancement of digitally held information, the above mentioned protections apply to digitally held information. However, audio, video and any other digital media can easily be copied and redistributed over networks, this protection is very important for organizations. Therefore more advanced methods of protection are needed to support the fast progression information system technologies.

Technological protections are needed to uphold legal protections. Some of these technologies include intrusion detection systems, authentication, message integrity, digital signature, digital certificate, firewall, cryptographic, and digital watermarking.

Intrusion detection systems are used to protect against suspicious network traffic. Vulnerable points in networks are monitor and any unauthorized accesses are identified. Various software applications are included in intrusion detection systems, such as scanning and monitoring programs. Scanning application is used to search for known problems such as bad passwords, removal or modification of important files, and sends warnings of vandalism or system administration errors. Monitoring software examines ongoing activities and detects security attacks. This system is capable in shutting down certain sensitive parts of a network if it receives unauthorized traffic (Laudon & Laudon, 2005).

Authentication and message integrity allow companies to verify and confirm the identity of the users of its intellectual properties. Digital signatures and digital certificates are used in the authentication process (Laudon & Laudon, 2004). By attaching digital signatures to electronic messages, the origins and contents of the parties requesting information can be identified by the organization. The use of digital certificates is another method that identifies the people involved in online transactions. This method employs
attachment of data files to identify the users (Laudon & Laudon, 2004).

Firewalls prevent outsiders from accessing an organization’s private information system by regulating the flow of information between two or more network systems (Laudon & Laudon, 2004). Firewalls create barriers for intruders in accessing intellectual properties stored in private networks by checking and rejecting unauthorized requests passing between public and private networks.

Another method which organizations can used to protect its intellectual properties is encryption. By encrypting data, which refers to the coding and scrambling of information, unauthorized usage of private information is disabled since it is impossible to understand the data without the decoding key. Although cryptographic techniques provide security during the transmission process, its purpose is eliminated once the data is deciphered.
To address these limitations of encryption, the main idea is to label a digital material with specific marks. Such a pattern is called digital watermarks.

DIGITAL WATERMARKING

Digital watermarking provides secure distributions of information over networks in business activities. By labelling intellectual properties with specific marks, organizations can claim ownership and control of the use of these materials.
Watermarking systems contain two essential steps: a watermark embedding system and a watermark detection system. The input to the embedding system consists of a watermark, an object, and a key. The watermark can be in the form of a number, text, or an image. The key enforces security through encryption, preventing unauthorized parties from recovering and manipulating the watermark. The output of the embedding system is the watermarked object. The input to the watermarking detection system contains the watermarked object, the key, and, depending on the watermarking methods, the original watermark or the original object. The output is the detected watermark or an indication of
its presence.

Watermarking techniques can be divided into two main categories. The first describes correlation-based methods; the second comprises non-correlation-based techniques. Algorithms of the first category embed digital watermarks by adding pseudo-random noise to the image components, which are detected by correlating the image noise with the components of the image. The second category can be subdivided into least-significant bit and geometrical-relation techniques. Most commonly used watermarking methods are based on correlation techniques. The watermarking technique chosen greatly depends on its vulnerability to potential attacks.

Watermarks can be applied to different such as paper, audio, etc. A translucent design impressed on paper during manufacture and visible when the paper is held to the light is a form of watermark used to protect paper money. This is the more traditional use of watermarks. The focus of this paper will be watermarking on digital media. Digital watermarking is a technology that combines this traditional watermarking technique with digital representation.

Digital watermarking means embedding information into digital material in such way that it is barely visible to the ordinary eye, but easily noticed by computer algorithms. The watermark acts as a signature, which identifies the owner and users of the content. An example would be watermark in secure drivers licenses and ID cards to prevent counterfeits in the U.S.