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More and more people are using instant messaging at work. Some companies have embraced IM and use it as a communications tool, others see IM as a frivolous waste of time and frown on it’s use.
Do you use IM at work? How do you use it? Does your company have a policy on IM usage? What are the issues?
There are two concerns the company I work for has about instant messaging: user authentication and security. They want to know that if I say I am “Jeff”, that I really am who I claim to be. Most public IM systems don’t really do a stringent validation, making it easy to masquerade as someone else. Another problem with most public IM systems is that they do not encrypt messages. Of course, this is only a problem if your using IM to send sensitive information, AND someone is packet sniffing your Internet traffic, AND knows what to do with the info.
Most IMs now work even behind the corporate proxy server now that they provide http proxy support. I have successfully used AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, and Odigo through the proxy server.
Mostly I use Sametime for internal contacts, but I use some of the others to maintain contact with some of my peers in the industry.
Jeff Hester
BigBlueBall.comIM was great for letting our field personnel contact technical support. The line was never busy, and the message was waiting when you got back to your desk. No one is always available, but it beat the phone for contacting office personnel.
Mark
I used to work for America Online as part of their tech support team. I used IM’s all the time, for people that general questions about AOL service, they would often IM me with their questions and or concerns and I would address them via IM or often times EMail.
Of course, the down side was anytime I logged on, I would be bombarded with 100 + IM’s from disgruntled members, and I could never get a moment’s peace online.
As far as the security issues are concern, there is one that is never talked about and that is lack of anonomity. If a malicious person wanted to track you down all they would have to do is send you an instant message, wait for your response, drop to DOS type netstat -a and obtain you IP address.
Of course this should be address in another thread, I am sure and I apologize ahead of time for bringing this point up here. It is probably going off the beated path but I felt that it had some relevancy to the post at hand, to a certain degree.
BuShWiCk
Hey ya all,I have been using IM instant messenger at work for the last one and half years, I use to work in Import Department as Import Executive, and the main nature of my job was to communicate with Exporters around the world, and IM was my tool. There were no actually policies or anything and not even anything about IM, I was the first one at work to use MSN Messenger or IM, Whenever I had time (which I use to have much) I use to get I use to sign-in, chat with my friends, check my emails but there was absolutely no use of it in Business,
A couple of months later, I had established personal relationships with exports and a couple of the exporters had given me their personal email address, and then the actual change came, we began to use Messenger for communication, as other ways of communication was fax, email and telephone, IM was actually the best and the cheapest communication tool, beside email, but as IM gives real time communication, I personally preferred using it… as I had to communicatio some figures, numbers and things, it was very easy with IM.
Just another couple of months and another couple of surprises came to me, I found out and almost all of our exporters use IM for personal (as it seems common), but the thing that surpirsed me is that all to them were like me, who use IM in personal life and they don’t like to (or I must say hesitate to) use for business… but we all had our personal relatoinships developed other than business relationships and now we were using IM in our personal life and we just dont know when we started using IM for business, I was also surprised to know that 100% of the exporters use MSN Messenger.
It just made me create a new Group in my messenger, called “Exporters”, and that group now have 66 contacts, Thanks to Windows Messenger and my Intel Web Cam I can now have a real Conferrence right on my desk round the world… without travel.
Got promoted, saved thousands of bucks… but still NO policies… got myself behind proxy, and feel a little safe.
Security? forget IM.
IM? Risk Security.🙂
watch out urxlnc is back !!!
Edited by – urxlnc on 08/01/2002 06:33:55
Hrm. I could go on for days here…
…but I’ll spare you that!! But when it comes to risk/security, yes, using PUBLIC IM networks in business is suicide. But there ARE secure IM options, and I don’t mean slapping filters and message managers on at your firewall at big bucks a seat…
In fact, a private, secure IM network can be a huge boost to a companies effectiveness in many ways – provided it is USED effectively and deployed sensibly. IM does NOT need to be equated to risk – it’s better equated to efficiency and effectiveness.
One thing that’s an issue is the cloudiness existing between the various flavors of IM, i.e. “Consumer Instant Messaging” (CIM) and “Enterprise Instant Messaging” (EIM). Of course, the big three like to keep it cloudy until they get their acts together, and the media does wonders in supporting that, however there is, and should be, a clear distinction, and for important reasons.
But…I promised to spare you a rant, so…I will! Have a good one!
well i dont work but my mom goes to work and they rnt aloud to check email send IMs and even go on there account! safety i think
Instant Messengers are not allowed where I work – School of Medicine. Security risks, I believe.
Lizzi
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