In an article on security problems with peer-to-peer software, ZDNet’s Dennis Fisher and Scott Berinato note that Groove apparently has been hit by security issues which might not be solved accept by the introduction of a managed client version which calls into question the usefulness of the software for non-enterprise users.
Another peer-to-peer venture that is struggling early with security is Groove Networks Inc. Developers at the Beverly, Mass., company are learning how to control access and document versioning without a central repository for managing keys and documents. Groove ran into a particularly thorny version of this problem during the development of its new platform, which lets users share documents and other data.
To address security, Groove plans to roll out a “managed client” early next year that will enable some central administrative functions and the ability to set user policies from a central console.
That, however, seems to chip away at the decentralized architecture that makes peer-to-peer appealing in the first place. And it calls into question whether this first generation of peer-to-peer enterprise applications is secure enough.
Nimisha Asthagiri, principal engineer at Groove, talks as if peer-to-peer, in its current state, is not ready. Groove’s managed client “[is] what IT managers really need to make a platform like this work,” Asthagiri said.