A survey of UK businesses found that 16% of respondents used IM to send/receive sensitive material, both within and outside the firewall. This is inherent to the social application of the tool, which is more akin to personal, rather than corporate, communication. Although it has clear business applications, its use is still inherently consumer-based.

So, you take a tool that people use to chat. You push and pull sensitive information and commentary across it. And you have an open network that causes security issues.

UK businesses could be leaving themselves open to new security and legal threats because they fail to control staff use of instant messaging. Big Blue Ball

A survey was conducted of 2000 people in the UK. One out of five of those people use IM from AOL, MSN or Yahoo, rather than corporate solutions. The most shocking part is that 62% of these companies have no policy or technology in place to blog phishing, viruses or misuse.

I know starting with any new company you are never “sure” if it’s ok to use an IM while at work. But this is always a culture thing. A “can I chat with my friends at work” find of thing. Never a security thing. Which it should be. Only when people realize the risk and take personal responsibility will this ever change. We saw it with email, and we see it now with IM.

The survey, commissioned by Akonix Systems, which specialises in IM security tools, claims IM viruses have increased five-fold in the past year.

However, another online security firm Sophos cautioned that IM threats still lag far behind email ones. It has issued warnings this year around IM viruses such as Kelvir-F and Bropia-R, but Carole Theriault, security consultant at Sophos, said, “We’re not seeing lots of variants.” Big Blue Ball

Via Big Blue Ball from E-Commerce Times

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 28th, 2005 at 7:53 pm and is filed under Instant Messenger News, Secure Instant Messaging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.