New White Paper Outlines Dangers and Security Pitfalls Associated with RSS Deployment

May 2, 2007; 07:51 AM
WorkLight™ (formerly Serendipity Technologies), an Enterprise 2.0 company, announced today the availability of a white paper that provides a guide to the dangers and challenges associated with using Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to deliver secure or protected data. The paper provides valuable information that companies need to consider when contemplating an RSS deployment.

Because of its ubiquity and ease of use, RSS has become a popular method for disseminating publicly-available information, like news and blog posts. As such, RSS has not escaped the attention of business and IT professionals, since it offers a new way to distribute enterprise data, and thereby revolutionize information sharing. Nevertheless, the pitfalls and security issues associated with "secure" RSS are plentiful. RSS is inherently not secure or scalable. When used for protected data, businesses need to consider many issues before embracing its adoption, issues which are not immediately obvious. For example, copies of so-called “secure feeds” may actually be cached on third-party servers, a practice that completely breaks the corporate security model and jeopardizes enterprise security.

The WorkLight white paper, entitled “The Challenges of Secure and Scalable RSS; Is RSS Ready for the Enterprise?” details the areas an organization must consider before providing information workers and customers access to protected information via RSS. These challenges encompass areas such as encryption, authentication, access control, and caching sensitive data and credentials – all issues important when scaling RSS enterprise-wide. The paper outlines these issues, details their resultant threats and offers some solutions to address them.

“RSS has the potential to provide great value to the corporate world, but only if it can maintain the high levels of information security that are required by today's business environment," said Steve Hunt, founder of security "think tank" 4A International and former Research Director for Forrester and Giga Information Group. "Businesses must understand the potential of RSS, but must also be aware of its dangers."

WorkLight develops and markets a server-based product that extracts data from enterprise applications and makes them available to information workers and customers via consumer technologies like RSS, personalized home pages, Ajax applications, and instant messaging. WorkLight is well aware of the importance of organizational security policies and access control in the enterprise, because it addresses these concerns with its customers on a daily basis. “Data security in the enterprise is perhaps the biggest concern of CIO’s today. The advent of consumer technologies in the workplace has escalated that concern,” said Yuval Tarsi, chief technology officer of WorkLight. “We are committed to ensuring a secure enterprise data environment. WorkLight is leading the market to educate people about the benefits and dangers of secure, enterprise RSS. It is important that organizations understand the issues before attempting a deployment."

The white paper is available for download now at www.myworklight.com/SecureRSS.

About WorkLight™

WorkLight™ (formerly Serendipity Technologies) provides customized and personalized “Web 2.0-style” access to corporate data that reside in enterprise applications. With WorkLight, employees themselves define how information they need is aggregated and presented, regardless of the source –- within the firewall or publicly available online from the Web. Most importantly, organizational access control and security policies are enforced.

WorkLight’s benefit is a substantial productivity gain, since people can find and use the information they need to do their jobs, quickly, efficiently and securely. Its enterprise-ready technology is scalable and conforms to existing and future corporate security and access-control policies. WorkLight received the “Stay Organized” award at Microsoft’s 2007 Under the Radar Conference for emerging technologies aimed at improving efficiency and productivity. It was also named a Red Herring International finalist in recognition of new technologies that have strategically shifted U.S. and International Markets. For more information, visit www.myworklight.com.