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How Secure Is Instant Messaging?

Companies balance convenience with safety concerns.

Frank Thorsberg

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As instant messaging use grows, so do business concerns about security, authenticity, and encryption.

Companies that wouldn't dream of conducting business through public, Web-based e-mail now worry that employees are sending unrestricted messages on public programs from AOL, MSN, and Yahoo.

Business users will make up nearly half of the 506 million IM users expected online by 2006, say IDC researchers. As business use increases, corporate network managers shudder at trying to control data traveling over public IM networks. Because users can activate IM themselves, IT doesn't know who sees sensitive data. Also, virus writers have begun to explore public IMs as a new way to spread their pests.

Still, IM's convenience and popularity is prompting businesses to determine how to implement the technology safely and to seek services that provide the desired security.

"We can use [IM] as a strategic tool to talk to customers [and] suppliers," says Francis DeSouza, chief executive officer of IMLogic, which markets IM monitoring software. Its tools are intended to help IT staff secure and track IM without quashing it entirely.

Regulated industries, such as medical, pharmaceutical, and financial firms, already closely monitor all communications and archive all e-mail to deter (or identify) inappropriate or illegal correspondence. When those industries want IM, they opt for closed systems that record all communications. For example, eight major financial firms, including Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, use Communicator Hub IM Service, a server-based closed IM service that provides encryption.

Private IM applications are found in communications servers such as IBM's Lotus SameTime and Microsoft Exchange. Separate IM products are available from Bantu, FaceTime, Jabber, and NetLert Communications.

Securing IM reassures companies worried about intellectual property dribbling out the IM window, says Terry Olkin, chief technical officer for online security firm Sigaba.

"[Public] messaging creates a big gaping hole that they have no coverage for whatsoever," Olkin says.

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