As IT administrators increasingly move to adopt enterprise-level instant messaging software, industry players say their first thought should be about how to make it secure. Francis deSouza, CEO of IMlogic, an instant messaging company based in Waltham, Mass., says there are two trends rolling through the IM industry these days. One is the corporate adoption […]
As IT administrators increasingly move to adopt enterprise-level instant
messaging software, industry players say their first thought should be
about how to make it secure.
Francis deSouza, CEO of IMlogic, an instant messaging company based in
Waltham, Mass., says there are two trends rolling through the IM industry
these days. One is the corporate adoption of a single, enterprise-level
IM package that would replace all of the instant messaging software that
end users have downloaded onto their machines over the years. The second
trend, deSouza says, is that the skyrocketing threat to instant messaging
software has IT administrators thinking about security.
And deSouza, along with other industry observers, says security should be
their first consideration. Actual implementation should be second.
”We’re in the midst of a pretty massive enterprise adoption wave for
instant messaging,” says deSouza. ”IT departments have embraced it and
they’re doing some very big rollouts… It’s hit the radar in terms of
being a main stream valuable business tool. Almost every large company
right now is in the midst of a rollout or are planning a rollout.”
Back in 2001 and 2002, instant messaging was being used in corporations.
But IT had nothing to do with it. End users, in love with the real-time
communication, were downloading various programs and running wild with
it. IT administrators simply were left of the loop.
The first concerns came from the business side with managers and
executives worried about lost productivity — since most communication
was about weekend plans and gossiping about the boss. Then managers
started to become concerned that sensitive information could be shooting
out beyond corporate walls.
Now, business and IT managers are in the thick of it.
As it turns out, instant messaging is a hot tool — not just for
gossiping and chit chat. It’s actually a legitimate business tool,
keeping colleagues in touch with each other, passing information back and
forth faster than email can manage, and helping remote workers feel like
part of the team. But just as IM shows its business side, hackers have
discovered it, as well.
”We’re seeing more than a 2,700 percent increase over last year of
reported incidents of IM viruses,” says deSouza. ”It’s absolutely lower
than email [viruses] today, but it’s following a very specific
trajectory. We know from our email experience how this plays out and with
IM, we’re on a very similar path.”
And deSouza says there is a lot to be learned from the way companies
deployed email years ago. Security wasn’t the first concern back then,
and it caused problems. We need to learn from that mistake, he adds.
”If you’re deploying a messaging structure, you need to deploy security
at the same time,” says deSouza. ”When you’re planning your IM rollout,
plan from Day Zero to have a security infrastructure. It also will help
put into place policies around archiving and system management.”
Ken Dunham, a senior engineer at Verisign-iDefense Intelligence based in
Reston, Va., says any organization rolling out an enterprise-level IM
implementation, or even considering it, need to identify security as
their top priority.
”You can’t just implement these things. You need to have a strategic
plan and it needs to fit into your larger plan for security,” says
Dunham. ”We’re going to see a lot more of these little IM worms pop up.
Organizations are getting hit by IM worms every day. They have to have
policies where they can understand how to deal with them, how to quickly
shut them down and respond to them. If you don’t have that in place,
you’ll need it very soon. It’s critical.”
MJ Shoer, president of Jenaly Technology Group Inc., a Portsmouth,
N.H.-based outsourced IT firm covering small- to mid-sized businesses in
New England, says he’s glad that IT execs are starting to think about
standardizing on one IM platform — and making it a secure one.
”We’re not fans of multiple IM clients,” says Shoer. ”It’s just more
exposure. One of the things about IM clients is the real-time connection
out to the public net. You could argue that you’re opening up a hole of
some sort. It’s not a huge hole and it’s not a major risk, but we
discourage multiple holes. If they have to have instant messaging, we try
to work with them to define one client that they’ll only use.”
Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020
Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020
Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020
FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020
How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020
Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020
The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020
CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020
Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020
Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020
NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020
Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020
IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020
Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 05, 2020
The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
August 14, 2020
Sharon Gaudin is a veteran technology journalist who has worked for the likes of Computerworld, InformationWeek, and Datamation. She has covered everything from the cloud, security, and social networking to software development, robotics, artificial intelligence, and hardware.
Datamation is the leading industry resource for B2B data professionals and technology buyers. Datamation's focus is on providing insight into the latest trends and innovation in AI, data security, big data, and more, along with in-depth product recommendations and comparisons. More than 1.7M users gain insight and guidance from Datamation every year.
Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.
