Section 31.1. About Groove Virtual Office

31.1. About Groove Virtual Office

Groove Virtual Office (GVO) is a peer-to-peer-based solution that allows distributed groups to share information inside and outside an organization. Many enterprises today need to share information with clients or remote workers outside of the corporate network. Thus, GVO encrypts data over the wire automatically. But that is not enough. Laptops can be stolen or otherwise compromised even if the data on them is not being transmitted. Thus, GVO also encrypts data stored locally.

In the years after September 11, the U.S. Military and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security became interested in GVO as a way of sharing sensitive information across organizational boundaries. The rapid way in which GVO can be deployed, and the high security of the system, have satisfied many of the government's requirements.

Information shared within GVO takes a number of different formsimages in the Pictures tool, files in the Files tool, events in the Calendar tool, reports in the Forms tool, minutes in the Meetings tool, and so on. In all, GVO supports more than 50 different tools, each appropriate to the nature of the data being shared. New tools can be created by customers and then "plugged in" to GVO's existing framework.

In Iraq, for example, Coalition Forces and more than 30 humanitarian organizations used a custom Rapid Assessment tool in GVO to distribute aid to the people of Iraq. The Rapid Assessment form (shown in Figure 31-1) allowed a field team to evaluate the aid needs of individual communities and automatically transmitted the information to distribution sites. In the wrong hands, the data shared by these groups could have been disastrous, potentially tipping off insurgents about the location of military forces. Connections to the network were dubious at best. In one case, the only connection to be found came from a completely insecure Internet café. Rarely is the need for information security in a hostile environment stronger.