IBM and Linden Lab create 'enterprise-safe' grid

Though the potential of Virtual Worlds for businesses has been established, the concerns of safety and security of (sensitive) corporate data has been a major issue and caused much reluctance for corporations to create their Virtual Office. Today Reuters announced IBM and Linden Labs have been working on a solution and are ready to go public with their 'Grid behind the Firewall'.

Using the server and client software of Linden Research Inc.'s Second Life, and the interoperability program created by IBM they managed to create a separate place which would allow any of the (well over) 5,000 employees of IBM to enter the private grid, but keep the rest of the Second Life users out of their corporate servers.

IBM has more than 5,000 employees using Second Life for purposes such as sales training or collaborating across different geographic regions. The company will also allow the employees to explore Second Life. And whey will be able to cross into IBM’s secure firewalled corporate network, much like users do with a virtual private network, which creates a secure connection from the Internet into a corporation so that users can log into enterprise applications from their homes.

The firewall will also prohibit regular users of Second Life from gaining access to portions of Second Life that are available only to IBM employees. Spohrer said that the companies have to work out exactly what to move behind the firewall to guarantee security.

Source: The Standard