Instant messaging - comms godsend or security back door?
‘As 60,000 users of Reuters messaging service found out in April, an instant messaging worm can seriously damage your day. The pernicious Kelvir worm, which spreads by sending copies to everyone on an infected client’s IM contact list, swept through the company so fast that Reuters shut down the service rather than let the worm propagate itself any further.
Only once the company was confident the worm had been removed - some 12 hours later - was normal service resumed.
As well as causing a serious headache for Reuters IT managers, the case has acted as something of a wake up call for the industry.
IM is becoming increasingly popular as a business tool. According to Gartner, IM will surpass email as the preferred method of interpersonal communications by 2006. Even now, more than 85 per cent of businesses use IM according to a recent Radicati Group report. As well as the specifically developed services, like that used by Reuters, employees are downloading any number of different IM clients such as MSN Messenger from Microsoft, AIM from AOL and Yahoo! Messenger - currently the three biggest players in a market….’
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