iTechnology Design; Secure RSS Reader for iPhone

by Bill French on 01/11/09 at 11:58 am

Bill French is an information architect specializing in Internet applications. He is also the co-founder of MyST Technology Partners and Senior Editor for iPhoneCTO.

Creating RSS newsreader apps for iPhone isn’t that difficult; at MyST, we designed a platform and we share it with our clients (for a small fee of course). Other frameworks exist as well – TapLynx (which I’ll review next month) is a comprehensive class library for building serious content-oriented applications for public consumption.

But there’s an equally large opportunity in enterprises where sensitive content must traverse the web to iPhones and RSS is the perfect transport mechanism for doing so; many enterprises already stream RSS content inside their firewalls to intranets, corporate portals and desktops. But the big “but” is the issue of security; RSS (by default) is not secure.

There are a few dozen RSS feed reader apps on iTunes; none of them indicate a capacity for fetching and rendering secure RSS content, but that’s about to change. iTechnology Design is testing a framework for secure syndicated information that will allow organizations to extend the influence of sensitive corporate information through secure RSS.

Secure RSS Lite is a free application for iPhone and iPod Touch. The free version allows users to read a single RSS Feed that can be configured from the credentialed settings in the application. The configuration screen allows the user to specify a feed URL, protocol, local caching, username and password. Assuming the feed is delivered over SSL (not a big challenge) and the feed is not cached on the device, enterprise IT groups should be pretty comfortable with this solution.

Enterprise RSS Requirements

image thumb1 iTechnology Design; Secure RSS Reader for iPhone

While secure feeds is a unique idea on the landscape of knowledge management and knowledge-worker awareness, the true business requirements suggest something far more intense in terms of information access – secure RSS items. Each feed item should [ideally] respond to a security context established through user identity. Managing that context at the point of consumption is not ideal; you must manage security context at the server. Secure RSS Lite supports this model because it only cares about access to the feed itself. If the feed items are based on the users security context, the user will see items on the iPhone that are intended for that user (and only that user). If the feed contains items that are intended for a different security context, they will never display in the secure RSS iPhone app because they won’t even be sent to it through the RSS feed.

Being able to deliver RSS information objects within a specific security context is unexplored territory for most organizations, but there content are platforms that support this requirement. If you have an interest in the short list just drop me a note (bfrench@iphonecto.com).

Secure RSS Pro

iTechnology Design also indicates that Secure RSS Pro will be available in the near future from the App Store for purchase and will allow the user to configure up to 5 secure RSS feeds. Both the free and paid versions feature optional use of SSL, authentication setup, and local caching of XML content for offline reading. I haven’t had access to this app yet, but as I mentioned above, security experts will insist on a switch that disables local caching of corporate information and that switch will likely have to be at the server, not the client.

The intent of iTechnology Design’s first release is to gauge market response for this tool to determine future feasibility of a more feature rich version. They also provide custom development and enterprise-level integration services for iPhone applications.

Full Disclosure

My company (MyST Technology Partners) has designed and developed iPhone applications in concert with iTechnology Design in the past. Our own MyST iPhone app was designed by this company and serves as the framework for MyST’s mobile content delivery technology stack.