October 19th, 2006
What’s in it for me?
A question I often get asked by users that are going monitored and protected by an Instant Messenger (IM) security system is “what’s in it for me?”…
Depending on who the user is I then list off some of the following reasons:
It can be your “Sent Items” for IM
How many times a day do you go and retrieve something from your sent items in your email program? Most of the newer IM clients have the ability to capture transcripts of your conversations but it’s usually off by default. I’ve also had problems with them moving the location of the stored messages between versions of the client, corruption occurring, forgetting which IM network I was talking to a person on, etc. However, if you have your messages logged by the server and your administrator has enabled access to your personal archives then you can just go to a web page and browse or search your archives.
It protects you against infection from virus’ of varying kinds
One of the main reasons organisations deploy IM security systems is the virus protection. IM is a totally different infection path to email and the attacks are increasingly sophisticated. They can include the virus chatting to you first before sending you a link that sends you off to a web page to get infected. Generally the people on your contact list in IM are usually people you know and trust and so when one of them sends you something you click it blindly.
It protects your contacts against infection from you!
I’ve heard some great stories in the past of very senior IT staff specialising in IM getting infected then passing the infection onto their teams! Can you imagine how embarrassed they were? Your contact lists may include suppliers and clients, would you like to be the one who sent them the virus that killed their system and lost them a whole heap of productivity?
There are plenty more benefits to the users but those mentioned above are usually enough to convince someone it’s not just another “big brother” ploy!