It is common to use cryptography to protect or hide sensitive data found in software from being seen or used by third parties. For example, Information Rights Management (IRM) is a feature found in the Office® software package from Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash. IRM can help prevent sensitive information from being distributed to or read by persons who do not have permission rights to access the content of the sensitive information. As another example, the Outlook® application, included in aforementioned Office® software package, enables users to create and send e-mail messages with restricted permission to help prevent messages from being forwarded, printed, or copied and pasted. Documents, workbooks, and presentations that are attached to messages with restricted permission are automatically restricted as well.
Sometimes, in addition to data that is found in software, the actual software product itself can be highly sensitive, such as, for example, in the case of software tools for Digital Rights Management (DRM) software systems. With the increased complexity of software products, it is becoming more difficult to control access to software products which may have many portions/sections, some of which are very sensitive to some users and some which may not be sensitive at all to other users.