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Information Technology News Second Life a security risk for businesses: Gartner
Information Technology News Second Life a security risk for businesses: Gartner | Second Life a security risk for businesses: Gartner |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Tuesday, 07 August 2007 | |
  
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“The risks enterprises face as a result of their involvement in virtual worlds are real and can be significant. They shouldn't be ignored — but neither should the potential opportunities and benefits that arise from using these new environments for corporate collaboration and communications,” said Steve Prentice, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. Major risks, according to Mr Prentice, concern identity authentication, confidentiality and risks to brand and reputation. With regard to identity, Mr Prentice believes that lack of verifiable identity control or access management is a major deficiency in public virtual worlds and is having a significant impact on the potential use of virtual worlds for internal collaboration purposes. "Individuals interact in virtual worlds via avatars, which are computer-generated representations of themselves. However, because new accounts can be opened with ease (and at no cost), many individuals have multiple avatars. Thus, it's difficult (if not impossible) to ensure that any specific avatar actually represents the person with whom it's associated," states Mr Prentice. Because of this, Gartner recommends that companies seriously evaluate the availability of "private" virtual-world environments, which are hosted internally and exist entirely inside the enterprise firewall. As far as confidentiality is concerned, virtual worlds aren't secure environments, according to Mr Prentice. Gartner believes that discussions involving confidential and commercially sensitive information shouldn't take place inside Second Life or any other virtual world — or in an open, Internet-supported social networking site. Worldwide legal systems (especially in the U.S.) have become increasingly aggressive in demanding access to electronically stored records, Gartner says. Gartner recommends moving to a private virtual world (built by using tools, such as GarageGames' Torque Game Engine or Sun's Java-based Project Wonderland; or developed using established applications (such as Forterra Systems' Olive) that are entirely contained inside the enterprise firewall. |
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