The advent of peer-to-peer file sharing empowers the public at large to share on the joy of being able to consume audio, video and miscellaneous materials over the internet, even if it entails the danger of copyright infringement (if at all). Yet consumers seem not to mind issues like security, bandwidth consumption, download/upload speeds, and the risks of malware such as adware and spyware with software that are in wide circulation today. Well, that is the situation consumers are getting into unless they know what they are using inside and out.

For business users, that’s a completely different story. Being more well-versed with the technology (well, I supposed), business users have a lot of options at their disposal.

One is Groove Virtual Office (GVO) from Groove Networks, the company founded by Ray Ozzie and was later acquired by Microsoft in March 2005. GVO enables you to share files securely using built-in user authentication and data encryption. Data resides within the domain of the company’s IT infrastructure. Files can be shared across multiple computers and with other people, remain in sync whenever there are changes made at work, at home or wherever there is an internet connection.

And even if you are on a dial-up line, intermittent connection is no problem because files will be uploaded or downloaded accordingly where it left off. It’s no wonder that Microsoft integrated GVO into its Office product. Now, that’s what I call secure file sharing.