“Our goal is to disseminate this gadget as a way of showcasing a new genre of enterprise products that will ultimately consumerize the enterprise,” said David Lavenda, VP of marketing and product strategy at Serendipity Technologies, as he announced the debut of the world’s first secure RSS reader.

“Central to the vision of Web 2.0 in the enterprise is the user-defined experience and enhanced employee collaboration. As a market leader, Serendipity is making this RSS reader freely available to demonstrate the power that will soon be available to enterprise information workers,”  Lavenda added.

Serendipity, a provider of secure, Web 2.0 access to enterprise applications, claims that this reader will allow information workers to receive updates of protected data currently lost within their information systems, for the first time ever.

Additionally, consumers will be able to securely receive customer-specific information from stores, banks, utilities and other organizations.

"This unique Web 2.0 tool was created to demonstrate how workers will soon be able to receive protected enterprise application information, right on their desktops or personal web pages," Lavenda continued. It can also be used as a conventional news and blog feed reader, he noted.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) was designed as an easy way to syndicate and deliver frequently updated information, like podcasts and news and blog feeds. It has since become the universally accepted way to deliver news and updates. Because RSS was designed for this purpose, its specification assumes that information feeds are publicly-available and unprotected. As such, the RSS specification incorporates no security mechanism whatsoever. Conversely, because of its wide-spread adoption, RSS has become a convenient way to deliver information not considered in the original RSS specifications.

Solving this security divide is a key enabler to pervasive enterprise collaboration, Levanda contended. He explained:

"One example of an RSS security threat is when web-based RSS readers cache feed data on a hosted home page provider, like Google or Microsoft. While acceptable for public news feeds, this is not acceptable for sensitive corporate data. Another example is the fact that existing RSS aggregators do not provide consistent support for encryption, authentication and access control, and are subject to numerous potential data and identity theft attacks.

Serendipity is stepping into this chasm as the first company to demonstrate the possibilities afforded by secure “Web 2.0-style” access to protected application data. This is just the beginning of a revolution in which information workers and consumers will securely access personal and sensitive information, using a variety of new Web 2.0 interfaces."