Posted

Apr 3rd 2006

Mood

Cheerful

Music

the snoozing of my "waffle"..... >_< Travis

In short the article I'm writing about is over person-to-person interaction and instant messaging in the work environment and how to keep them secure. It's now come down to the fact that people use p2p and IM more often then most communication. College students use instant messaging as a way to talk to people almost as much as they use their cell phones, and with that being said they expect instant messaging to be allowed in the work place as well. Sadly most instant messaging and person-to-person programs aren't the most secure and have many problems with worms, trojans, back doors into and out of the company network and other harmful problems that allow the company network to become vulnerable to data loss or security risk. To top that it's not just recent college graduates that want p2p and instant messaging, many inside the company want the tools to make work and communication to run smoother in the company; however, programs like the those chosen by the employee aren't approved by the IT department and are placed on company computers without the IT department's knowledge.

The fret can stop there, well at least for now, because the use of third party tools can help alleviate some of that risk put into the company network with p2p and IM. These tools as stated in the article "identify rogue IM services; block specific P2P software; or enhance the overall P2P software security." Better yet is the fact that some of those third party tools are freeware. One program included at RTMonitor to help detect all real time communication, and another had a program to stop unauthorized use of Skype a p2p voice over IP that is recently becoming rather popular. Other programs included are spy and adware detectors as well.

There is still the problem of converting some users to the new or rather the company network p2p or instant messenger. Many would rather work with their well known and more comfortable programs, because learning a new program is more trouble then they seem to feel its worth. One president of a technology consulting firm in New York had even backed up that third party tools were better to go with than having a company based program. It even quotes him saying; "Just like email, instant messages can be used as evidence in a legal case, so it pays to make sure you have IM and P2P software under control in your IT environment."

The article concludes with a "Pandora's Box" list that restates what the p2p program if left unchecked can do to or cause to happen on a company network. All that need to be mentioned are; that they open up back doors into the network, allowing direct access to corporate info putting the organization in breach of privacy legislation, also it can enable the exchange of copyrighted material, making the company vulnerable to breach of copyright lawsuits, overload network bandwidth with unauthorized file sharing activities, and finally will allow bundled adware applications to be installed on the network without the user's knowledge.


Where to get the article and what to look for:
Article Name: Peer-to-peer protection
By: Joseph C. Panettieri
Link to page: http://scmagazine.com/us/news/article/544834/peer-to-peer+protection/