Instant Messaging in the Enterprise

Network users demand connectivity apps these days. One of today's "must-haves" is instant messaging. Personally I find I use IM very seldom, but the newest generation of employees have grown up with SMS and IM and grown to expect it. It makes me realize I'm getting old when I see these "kids" and their SMS and IM.

IM clients produce their own security issues, such as viruses, social engineering, exploits and eavesdropping. Opening your network to just any IM client can be a scary proposition, not to mention a huge productivity hole. Attempting to block IM clients can be a technical nightmare with your users staying just one step ahead of you in the "block" and "bypass" game.

I've taken another approach to solve this problem by providing an IM client to each workstation. Rather than just allowing everyone access to Yahoo! or MSN Messenger we've installed our own OpenFire server. In addition to providing instant messaging between employees in all of our offices, including remote offices, we've integrated it with our Asterisk phone system so that it can report the on phone / idle status of any contact. Adding the extra phone system integration seems to have been key to helping our users find a value-add with the system. It also reports incoming caller-id on a user's desktop as a little pop-up window making it invaluable.

This allows my network team to control access and security for the entire instant messaging system, while allowing users to feel more connected. I think it's key for network administrators today to embrace the technologies that user's are used to using such as IM, blogging, etc and if done properly you can still ensure security and control over the system.