Controlling access to digital assets has always been an issue for some organizations, but an increasing amount of regulation and controls have now made this a problem for a much wider range of companies. In addition, evolving business needs and technology advances have changed the traditional boundaries of the organization, making it more difficult for the IT department to manage access to digital assets. Historically, the firewall was regarded as the perimeter of the organization. Employees were predominantly office-based, working on shared drives or PCs, with all data remaining within the company. Any interactions with external parties were conducted by either emailing the relevant data to the external party or allowing limited access to the required data within the application that generated it.