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Postini IM Security: Instant Messaging, Productivity, Security, and Your Business
Instant messaging (IM) has become a standard business tool, joining email as a core business communications medium. According to a 2005 study by the Radicati Group, IM is in use at 85% of companies polled, where it is improving customer communications and reducing communications costs.
However, much of IM usage is frequently "under the radar" of the IT department—because it is easy for employees to download public IM clients without the approval or knowledge of the IT team. Publicly available IM clients are designed to find a way through firewalls, making them difficult to control, secure, and manage. The result is that while IM is broadly in use in many businesses, only 25% manage and protect it.
IM is therefore an enticing target for hackers and spammers (called spimmers in the world of IM), exposing many companies to vulnerabilities. Users can unknowingly activate worms by clicking malicious URLs from spoofed buddies. Hackers can steal company directories by scanning contact lists. Company data can be leaked via unauthorized file transfers, since IM clients don't check content against policies or have the ability to archive messages for regulatory compliance.
Postini IM Security resolves all of these issues; it stops IM-borne threats from reaching your network, and enables the monitoring and archiving of IM. Administrators can dynamically set IM access policies, control inbound and outbound IM file transfers, filter conversations for inappropriate or sensitive content, and archive IM sessions for future search and retrieval.
Postini Instant Message Security delivers:
- A unified view of the message landscape with email addresses, aliases, and IM screen names connected to a uniform policy
- Visibility and control over inbound and outbound IM usage
- Secure and confident use of IM as a business productivity tool
- Filtering for IM malware that dynamically detects and prevents IM-borne threats
- Filtering and supervision of IM content by organization, group, and user
- The ability to archive conversations for compliance and investigation support
Like all Postini services, Postini IM Security is an on-demand service, making it fast and simple to deploy, requiring no specialized IM expertise or the installation of any hardware or software.
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