Patent ID: 7849512

Claim:
A method of securing a distributed project environment on a client side computing device in a secure project room system, the method comprising: defining a particular secure project on the computing device, the particular secure project including a plurality of pieces of content of the project where the content is secured so that only a user with a proper access privilege can access the content, one or more validated applications that are validated for use with the particular secure project wherein the one or more validated applications are configured for the particular secure project to be able to access and copy the secure content and an access policy for a set of users; accessing, using one of the validated applications, the secured content by a user that is a member of the access policy wherein the content is decrypted while being accessed by the validated application; verifying, using an access policy manager of the secure project room system, when a piece of content is accessed by an application, that the application is a validated application; monitoring, during the period when the piece of content is decrypted, using the access policy manager of the secure project room system, the operations of the computing device that are capable of producing one of a complete copy and a partial copy of the piece of content; disallowing, when a copy operation of the content by the application on the client side device is detected by the access policy manager of the secure project room system, the copy operation if the application is not a validated application; disallowing by the access policy manager of the secure project room system, when the application on the client side is trying to copy the piece of content to a location that is not within the particular secure project room, the copying of the piece of content by the application; and copying, on the client side computing device, if the copy operation is allowed the piece of content within the particular secure project so that the copied piece of content is stored in secured format.