Article by George Norman

On 18 Jun 2009

Symantec, company that specializes in providing antivirus, antispyware, and internet security software solutions, has announced the release of a comprehensive instant messaging security, control and management service called MessageLabs Instant Messaging Security Service (IMSS). The release comes from Symantec’s commitment to provide enterprises with the means to adopt a safer, auditable use of public instant messaging (IM) networks.

According to a study published by information technology research and advisory firm Gartner, the estimated penetration rate of instant messaging (IM) adoption at an enterprise level is of 35% to 40%. This raises the issue of compromised profitability and productivity in the workplace, inappropriate IM use and of course, deliberate data leakage. One of the main reasons cited by companies when blocking IM internally is security; but with MessageLabs Instant Messaging Security Service (IMSS) admins have full control over instant messaging use and can enforce certain usage policies.


“More immediate than email, more versatile than the telephone, organizations are increasingly forgetting Instant Messaging’s legacy as a consumer tool and accept it and its benefits as a credible business tool. The Instant Messaging Security Service provides protection and control functionality to the public IM services, making them viable enterprise tools with the necessary visibility and accountability for today’s regulatory needs,” commented, Senior Vice President, Software as a Service Group with Symantec, Adrian Chamberlain.

MessageLabs Instant Messaging Security Service (IMSS) comes with the following features:
- Support for the best known public IM networks.
- Provides adequate protection against the known and unknown threats that propagate via IM networks.
- Intuitive policy-building capability.
- Multiple rules stacking capability.
- IMSS is fully integrated with other MessageLabs services.
- IMSS provides detailed reporting functionality.
- You need not download any software to your network; you do not need to download an agent either.
- Firewall rules that cannot be bypassed by the employee.
- Easy to set up and use.

In related news, it seems that Yahoo! Mail and Symantec security software products do not play well together, causing Yahoo! Mail to experience performance issues. A workaround has already been provided by the Yahoo! Mail team, workaround that you can use while a fix is being rolled out (detailed article on the subject here).



Tags: Symantec, IM, Instant Messagin, Enterprise, MessageLabs Instant Messaging Security Service, IMSS

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