Reactivity last week added support for the Real Simple Syndication format to its XML gateway technology, providing a way for users to secure and control access to information distributed using the real-time communication technology.

While instant messaging, presence and Web conferencing are now the dominant real-time corporate communications tools, RSS is in its infancy but gaining popularity.

RSS is an XML format widely used to syndicate news from blogs or news sites and has become popular with publishers, marketing firms and advertisers. RSS feeds alert users to the availability of new content on Web sites or blogs. RSS can carry HTML tags and content, such as audio files, but also can transport malicious content such as malware and spam.

With Microsoft's recent announcement that it will add XML-based syndication into its Internet Explorer 7.0 browser, the capability to use the technology will soon be in the hands of many more end users.

"Enterprises are looking at many scenarios for RSS," says Ray Valdes, research director for Gartner. "How about a blog within a department that is associated with a project, and distributing information through the blog. And RSS is not just for human authors. It could be used to distribute information, like a report, that is automatically generated by an application. Where a current system might e-mail the report, now you could use RSS to distribute the report."

RSS is not a stand-alone tool and will require that current systems be updated or modified to integrate with it, Valdes says. And there will be many ways to secure RSS traffic.

"Just like today with e-mail, you can encrypt it, send it over a VPN or use some other security mechanism," he says.

Reactivity is hoping to secure RSS traffic with its XML Security Gateway and SOA Gateway, both of which can authenticate access, secure transport, encrypt single and aggregated RSS feeds, and transform RSS data to and from other XML formats. It includes tracking, auditing and reporting features.

Reactivity officials say those capabilities will let corporate users ensure data privacy and protection and meet government compliance mandates.

Reactivity is partnering with service provider SimpleFeed, which provides a service to transform corporate documents into RSS formats for the nearly 600 varieties of RSS readers available today.