Instant Messaging A Genuine Threat

May 18th, 2006: New surveys and reports support a more concerted effort to understand the threat levels posed by unreined use of Instant Messaging systems in the workplace.

By Tim Smith

A recent survey from Websense supports research released by the Information Security Forum (IIF) with both claiming that the use of instant messaging systems (IMSs) pose not only a larger security threat than was previously supposed, but are also having a major impact on record management compliance.

Andy Jones, senior research consultant at the ISF says, " "There are an increasing number of laws and regulations, including money laundering, that require organisations to manage and retain business records, but the law doesn't necessarily view email and IM as simply casual and unofficial communication - they can sometimes form business records. On the other hand, data privacy laws may prevent the retention of records that are intended to be private."

On the security front, the recent Websense survey of 400 IT professionals produced a statistic that will strike fear into any IT admin, saying that, '81 per cent (of the 400 interviewed reported) a phishing attack via email or instant messaging'.

Speaking to a variety of internet security solutions providers including Symantec and MessageLabs in recent weeks, IDM has discovered that these reported figures are being greeted with apathy in the region.

Both companies told us that, despite having solutions available to counter both the inbound and outbound threats posed by IM, the tendency is currently for organisations to ignore the dangers.

From a records management perspective, the fact that IM sessions can be used to transfer documents from person to person poses one problem. This is compounded by 'conversations' regarding organisational concerns that are not generally logged.

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