By Mary Mosquera,
The Napster music copyright suit has sparked commercial opportunities and underscored security risks for users of the file-sharing technologies.
Peer-to-peer technology might empower users to cut out record label companies and share music files directly with other users. It also increases security and privacy risks, said Sam Curry, security architect at McAfee.com Corp. (stock: MCAF) in Sunnyvale, Calif.
McAfee.com, a majority-owned subsidiary of Network Associates Inc. (stock: NETA), Santa Clara, Calif., is the largest consumer security application service provider (ASP).
Others believe the peer-to-peer technology used in Napster, San Mateo, Calif., can make businesses more efficient, cutting out the need to have documents and files administered in one central location.
NextPage LC in Provo, Utah, says P-to-P is moving power away from centralized servers and data administrators and into the hands of the customer.
The Recording Industry Association of America filed suit against Napster, which indexes MP3 music files that users share, for violating the copyrights of artists and record companies.
Napster is a minimal threat because it's just looking for MP3 files, Curry said.
"But what if someone builds a file that is MP3 but has something else like a virus?" he asked. "More significant threats come with Scour or Gnutella that can share other kinds of files."
Gnutella software, also popular among song-sharers, allows users to access each other's music files with peer-to-peer technology. Two search engines, Scour.net and iMesh, promise to allow users to search not only Internet sites but also users' personal computers for information.
This ability coupled with always-on Internet high-speed access from cable modems or digital subscriber lines (DSL) presents users with security challenges, Curry said.
Along with the new personal freedom and ease of obtaining information comes the possibility of hacker attacks targeted directly at users' PCs and utilizing users' machines without their knowledge in distributed denial of service attacks.
Personal digital assets, such as tax and banking information stored on PCs, are also potential hacker targets, Curry said.
A program being tested called Wrapster, which works in conjunction with Napster to "wrap" personal data files to appear as MP3 files, lets hackers steal data from PC hard drives, he said.
While many corporations have fortified their networks, personal users are generally unprepared and defenseless, he said. PC users are more in need of a personal firewall than ever before to protect their digital assets from malicious hackers, he said.
Firewalls intercept traffic and inform the user what's happening. McAfee.com offers hacker protection through its personal firewall software, Curry said. It allows the user to control access to confidential data.
"The real rush in the tech space is the wow-neat idea, but not trumping the dangers," Curry said. "You see very fast convergence and that people can do more and more every week. But security is becoming less common."
One business has found the Napster case was a boon to raising awareness about its products. NextPage uses peer-to-peer network technology to connect partners, suppliers, and employees to the information they need, regardless of where it resides or in what format on the e-business content network.
"A P-to-P network scales across lots of servers," said Darren Lee, vice president of product marketing at privately held NextPage. "It also gets over the political problem of people sending to one central source."
Originally, some customers had a difficult time understanding the concept, he said. Now, he just cites the Napster similarities, and people know what he's talking about.
NextPage is trying to demonstrate how such technology, minus the controversy, can help e-commerce.
NextPage technology enables users to connect disparate content servers together in an e-business content network.
The company has as customers, for instance, law firms and insurance companies that use technology similar to music sharing. It allows businesses within its network to share content and add to their intellectual property, Lee said.
A security module is deployed along with the technology on the network that authenticates access to content inside or outside of a company.
"P-to-P is a fundamental shift for commercial information. It will also improve employee productivity," Lee said.
Integrated access that comes with P-to-P overcomes the shortcomings of organizing content in one central server and one central administrator.
"That technology just doesn't scale to host all the content people want," he said.
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