Why paid Enterprise IM instead of free Public IM?
Instant Messaging has slipped quietly into the Enterprise via Public IMs. Though IMs have increased productivity to a great extent, they are also used by employees to stay in touch with their family and friends.
The unregulated use of public IM services like Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, ICQ introduce significant risks in a corporate environment. Consumer IM services require users to access external domains that fall outside the corporate firewalls making the network vulnerable to virus attacks. There is no way to regulate, audit, archive or monitor the conversations over public IMs. Moreover, with greater emphasis on compliance, it is even more necessary to archive and log all IM conversations for auditing purposes. There is no way to prevent sensitive company information or intellectual property from being exchanged with competitors. This is a critical concern for any organization.
Enterprises do not rely on free email services like Hotmail or Yahoo! for the same reasons. This is where Enterprise IM steps in to be a part of a corporations advanced communication network.
The demerits of a Public IM from a security viewpoint are
- Data Theft – Key business information and intellectual property can be easily leaked by insiders. Customer lists, research and development, financial data are all highly lucrative and can give your competition an upper hand in business.
- Free public IM products are not capable of meeting the security, auditing, managing or control needs of a contemporary organization
- Public IM services host the messaging service, and the messages hence they have access to all your data shared over IM.
- IM services use port 80 (used for HTTP traffic). Open ports offer convenient methods to leapfrog the system into passing them data– significantly increasing exposure to security breaches
- Identity theft - the authenticity of users is suspect
- Files sent via IM might have trojan viruses and other malicious software that increase the security vulnerability of the organization’s private network.
- IM systems do not incorporate encryption; hence are insecure. Confidential information cannot be exchanged
- Instant messaging is increasingly being used for personal purposes reducing employee productivity
Consumer grade public IMs lack:
- enterprise class features like conversation archiving and logging
- Rule engine based access control to restrict information flow
- transplug data encryption
- Network traffic monitoring and management facility
- Not able to leverage existing load balancing and fail-over systems
- Secure authentication, authorization, privacy and integrity protection
- Management and control of the entire system through a single console or location
