As everything that is great for the enterprise, instant messaging is also plagued with risks. Buddy icons and file sharing are the two most popular public IM functions used. Public IMs, by nature, allow third party application writers to create plugins that work with their instant messaging clients. This allows malicious code to be easily written to perform various functions on enterprise systems ranging from viral promotions to gaining backdoor entry to enterprise networks. In allowing file transfer, data theft can occur often through employees that are gullible to outsiders using wrong influences like bribes, blackmail or simple impersonation.

Above all, enterprises are losing control over what comes in and goes out of their network. With instant messengers making it very easy for someone to gain direct or indirect access to company information, enterprises are seeking ways in which the benefits of using IMs in the enterprise can be retained without the security threats that public IMs bring along.

Enterprises are making decisions

CIOs: 8 out of 9 will be wrong about IM usage

Of the 1.4 billion IM accounts predicted for end 2007, business IM users will be 40 million growing to more than 140 million by 2009. These numbers of course are from enterprises that are willing to declared their stance on enterprise IM. In a survey recently conducted, 9 out of 10 CIOs had confirmed that public IMs have no place in their networks and strongly agree that their users are not using instant messaging. It was found that 8 out of the 9 companies that confirmed no IM penetration were wrong, with browser based IMs from all public networks being used through proxys and other methods.

Enterprises need to take / are taking assertive decisions

The most impulsive “knee-jerk” reaction for all CIOs, usually the most immediate reaction is to block all IM activities on their networks. This was the first reaction that email had received years ago too. This unfortunately is reacted to with most resentment and can have a large corporate social image implication.

CIOs can also choose to control IM traffic, however, such control is very HR and support intensive. Secondly, most gateway overlay products inherently block popular IM functionality removing all direct benefits of using IMs. Tools like whiteboards, conferences and application sharing may not work. Also, since there is no IM standardization, text or file transfer logging will also fail in most cases.

The most preached way to work with IM is to bring in an enterprise grade IM product. However, these comes at very high entry costs. Where a good gateway overlay solution may cost between 10K to 20K USD, EIM products can cost between 40K to 60K USD with implementation, support and training cost equally high. Also, the IM clients that EIM makers have are very cryptic and complicated and hence not very user friendly.