IM is the biggest, most overlooked threat

Messaging guru Michael Osterman discusses the overlooked IM threat, the best low-cost archiving solutions and how social networking affects the enterprise in this chat transcript.

By Network World Staff, Network World
September 20, 2007 10:57 AM ET

. What's this?

Moderator-Linda: Welcome and thank you for coming. Our guest today is Michael Osterman. Also watch for upcoming chats with Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels (October 1) and national IT recruiter Matt Colarusso (October 9). If you have requests for other guests for chats, please send an e-mail to jbort@nww.com. Now, onto the chat.

Michael_Osterman: Hello, everyone! It's a pleasure to be here today.

Chris4742: What's the biggest threat today in the messaging space?

Michael_Osterman: It really depends on where an organization is with regard to how well it is protecting its infrastructure. For example, newer types of spam, such as PDF spam or Excel spam can represent significant threats for orgs that have not done enough to protect against them. Viruses continue to pose a serious threat, but not so much for orgs that have multi-layered defenses. IM is probably the most underrated threat at this point because not enough orgs have deployed systems to protect against unfettered consumer IM use.

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JeffCaruso: So, are consumer IM systems really the security threat to corporations we always hear about? Any IM-delivered viruses actually infiltrating companies?

Michael_Osterman: They are definitely are. Akonix, FaceTime and others have reported significant increases in the number of IM-borne threats so far this year.

lurker: But are you actually hearing from any big IT shops about IM viruses being a big deal?

Michael_Osterman: Most orgs tells us in our surveys that they have not been the victim of an IM borne virus, worm, etc. However, most of these threats are very quiet, capturing data, etc., and so I think the problem is probably underreported since not enough IT managers are focusing on it.

serverguy: What kinds of products are out there that can stop IM security messages from infecting the enterprise?

Michael_Osterman: There are a variety of server-side capabilities that can manage IM traffic, filtering out threats, URLs, preventing file transfer capabilities, etc. Many organizations try to block IM, but that's not an effective strategy for preventing the threats. IM content really has to be managed as its own entity.

Western5041: I keep hearing that newer workers are more apt to use instant messaging or SMS texting rather than e-mail. Are the days of e-mail numbered?

Michael_Osterman: I don't think so. IM is a great tool, but it is used primarily for its presence capability -- most IM conversations end in a phone call, for example. There are times when you want to transmit information but don't care about the current presence of the recipient, so e-mail will still be a great tool for those applications. Ultimately, we see a gradation of communications, in which people have a single contact point, such as an e-mail address. Recipients will then use directory-based rules to define how they want to receive communications -- via e-mail, IM, voice, on their mobile device, etc. Senders won't have to worry about which medium to chose -- they will simply send a message and it will be received via the medium the recipient has chosen.