Instant messaging
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Instant messaging is increasingly popular, but businesses need to take the security threats seriously, a survey by Sybari Software concluded.
As business users increasingly adopt instant messaging (IM) as a means of communication with colleagues and partners, employees are unwittingly exposing their companies to the threat of viruses, worms and dangerous spam.
A recent survey conducted by security specialist Sybari Software found that while over 80% of respondents see a real business benefit in such real-time communication tools, three out of four have deep reservations about the associated security risks.
The vast majority appreciate that IM needs to be managed at server level, with respondents estimating that, on average, IM could decrease their phone bills by around 11%.
However, in spite of the fact that employees are individually installing their own choice of IM (such as the IM products from AOL, MSN and Yahoo), more than half of businesses have no plans to install a corporate IM application at a managed server level.
Businesses were also worried about the exposure or loss of sensitive or confidential data, especially when that might involve a breach of industry rules or legislation. Related to that were concerns over the vulnerability of employees' computers to remote controlling 'hijackers' and IM conversation spying.
The survey also showed that over half of those questioned do not include IM information in their corporate email usage guides, and 28% do not currently have a corporate messaging policy of any kind.
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