The Price of Instant Messaging Acceptance
By Stephanie Jordan
Instant messaging came of age in 2005. Clearly no longer the tool of teenagers, rapid adoption by SMBs and enterprises alike has spurred the growth of this fast and convenient communications tool. Globally, instant messaging use is on the rise-with nearly 12 billion instant messages being sent every day, according to IDC Research. comScore Media Metrix reports that there are more than 300 million people worldwide who regularly use IM. "2005 is the year that IM hit prime time in the enterprise," says Francis deSouza, president and CEO of IMlogic. deSouza believes IM hit critical mass on a number of fronts, including users asking for IM addresses as often as exchanging email addresses, IT departments grasping the level of grassroots adoption within their companies, and organizations realizing they need an instant messaging policy.
Increase in Threats
But the adoption has come at a price-with 2005 seeing dramatic increases in threat volume and hacker sophistication. FaceTime Communications, recently released a report citing threats over IM and P2P networks increased by more than twenty-fold in 2005, representing a 2,200 percent increase over 2004. Furthermore, incident frequency appears to be accelerating-with almost 800 incidents recorded in Q4 2005 alone.
In a recent poll conducted by Akonix Systems, Inc, of more than 100 organizations, only 11 percent reported having IM hygiene solutions in place, compared to 73 percent with email hygiene. The poll reflects the remarkable disparity in security applied to IM compared to email leaving the vast majority of IM usage unmonitored and unprotected, creating openings for viruses, spam, worms and unknown breaches of corporate compliance.
A Rapidly Growing Market
The Radicati Group anticipates enterprise IM to jump from an installed base of 51 million users in 2005 to 126 million in 2009. With the rapid adoption of IM networks by consumers and corporate users, combined with evolving real-time com-munications functionality such as VoIP, Symantec's recent agreement to acquire IMlogic is not surprising. "When Symantec embarked on this, the company looked at all the players in the market and made the selection of IMlogic," says deSouza. "Symantec and IMlogic have had a strong partnership for several years, and with this acquisition, Symantec now has the only comprehensive solution for complete messaging security and archiving." The acquisition is expected to be complete by the first quarter of 2006.
As proven with email, along with market maturity comes an increase in the sophistication and probably maliciousness of threats to the communications medium, never before has IM security needed to keep pace with adoption rates than this year. SJ/MNP