* A look at the security problems with Google's Desktop Search and SSL VPNs
We have done a couple stories in the past two weeks that look at the security problems with Google’s Desktop Search program and SSL VPNs.
As reported by Tim Greene (tgreene@nww.com) customers are concerned that SSL VPN data might be cached and indexed by Google Desktop Search on a machine that is out of corporate control, such as an employee’s home PC or one borrowed by an employee visiting a business associate.
To address these concerns SSL VPN vendors that sell versions of Sygate’s Virtual Desktop software touted it as a way to quarantine and encrypt SSL VPN sessions. But they discovered during tests with Network World last week that Google Desktop Search could still grab the content of Word documents and cache it in readable form.
Since then, Sygate says it has developed a fix for the bug that it distributed last week. It also has sought the help of Google to create a foolproof way for SSL VPN sessions to vanish from hard drives without a trace. Google says it is considering the request.
It’s an interesting problem. For more on this see: https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/112204google.html
