SharePoint Online Information Rights Management (IRM) leverages the Azure Rights Management service to encrypt data and assign usage policies or restrictions. IRM allows you to restrict actions, such as printing or copying data or using Print Screen to capture a screenshot. Information Rights Management requires a subscription with Rights Management Services features enabled.

Information Rights Management can be applied to document lists and libraries and can protect PDF, XPS, and Office document versions for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 97 and newer. IRM protections are applied to content as it is downloaded from SharePoint Online. The IRM protection does have drawbacks, however:

• IRM-protected documents cannot be edited in a browser.
• IRM-protected documents do not support real-time co-authoring.
• IRM-protected documents require an IRM-aware application to be opened or modified.

The rights that are applied to documents are stored as part of the document, making the restrictions portable. Configuring IRM in SharePoint Online requires following two processes:

• Activating the Information Rights Management Service
• Applying IRM protections to lists or libraries

We will go over these processes in this section.