Firms to get IM guidance

Guidance for effective business use of instant messaging is in the works

Claire Pope, IT Week 16 Aug 2004

E-business body Eema is developing a best practice guide for instant messaging to help companies control the use of IM, which many predict will soon replace email as the main channel for business communications.

Eema is working with IM providers including IBM and Microsoft, and user organisations such as Unilever, to create a guide for implementing IM securely while complying with corporate policy and current legislation. The guide is due in October.

Roger Dean, head of special projects at Eema, predicted IM would replace email in the workplace in the next few years, so systems would be needed to control its use.

He said that with current systems it can be difficult to authenticate IM users, so many firms do not know who is gaining access. "Usage policies are an effective preventative tool against allowing viruses onto the network," he added. "[Email address harvesters] can easily come in and suck information out of the computer or push in viruses."

A separate problem is that of system incompatibility. At present, the major public and enterprise messaging systems do not allow users to chat across platforms, meaning businesses may have to manage multiple IM clients.

However, recent moves may make life easier by boosting interoperability. Microsoft last month announced it would allow messages to move between its Office Live Communications Server 2005 and Yahoo, MSN and AOL's public IM networks.

IBM is on a similar path, and its Lotus messaging product already links with AOL's client. Dean predicted IBM and Microsoft would soon have to allow interoperability between their enterprise offerings.

The Eema guide should prove particularly useful to firms in the financial sector. Many traders rely on IM for negotiating and closing deals, but the applications are not always used under the auspices of the IT department, which can increase risks to security and data protection.

According to research by security specialist FaceTime Communications, 54 percent of large financial institutions use IM, but almost half have no idea who is using it, whom they are communicating with or what they are saying.

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