Austin Lane

By now, most people are familiar with the major Instant Messaging tools, but are you aware that they pose security risks, especially in a Business setting? How much time do you spend using Instant Messaging tools? How much time do you spend using them while at work? Would you get more accomplished if you did not have access to Instant Messaging? Can Instant Messaging be an effective and productive communication tool?

Instant Messaging has become a tool for communication that people from every age bracket and ethnicity utilize. It has increased communication between people, and has made this communication occur much faster than Mail or E-mail ever has. It allows you to get instant feedback from people across many geographic locations. This is great for home use where users are trying to communicate with friends and family that are scattered across the world. However, it can cause many issues in the Business setting.

Here are Austin Lane Technologies, Inc., we have banned the use of Instant messaging entirely. Why? It is because it can lead to lost productivity and wasted time. Also, there are viruses, worms, and trojans that attack Instant Messaging clients. Another major reason that Austin Lane Technologies, Inc. does not let internal users utilize Instant Messaging tools is that it can lead to confidential information leakage as well.

While we do not allow internal users to use Instant Messaging, there are situations that you could make a business case for utilizing Instant Messaging. One would be if your company has multiple locations, and you have to communicate between them quickly. In these situations, email can take too long to reach its destination and a phone call may not be answered in time.

For companies like this, the common Instant Messaging networks may not work for security reasons. There are over 80 known exploits for AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and the ICQ networks. In order to account for this and ensure that your network is secure, there are a number of internal-only Instant Messaging platforms that you can deploy. This is the safest way to deploy Instant Messaging, as it isolates your Instant Messaging network from all of the public Instant Messaging networks that have all of these security vulnerabilities and people that spend time spreading the exploits.

If you would like more information about how you can deploy secure, internal instant messaging in your office, please contact Austin Lane Technologies, Inc. You can find more information at RedmondMag.com

This entry was posted on Monday, June 4th, 2007 at 12:01 am and is filed under Browsers, Construction, Email, Internet, Jeff's Tech Tip, Mobile Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.