Companies must manage IM, study says.According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. a recent Meta Group survey, instant messaging Exchanging text messages in real time between two or more people logged into a particular instant messaging (IM) service. Instant messaging is more interactive than e-mail because messages are sent immediately, whereas e-mail messages can be queued up in a mail server for seconds or (IM) is used more often in the workplace for personal reasons than for business purposes. The report found that 57 percent of the people surveyed at 300 companies worldwide use IM at work for personal communications more often than for job-related activities. Meta Group found that 35 percent of companies have no official policy regarding IM, although many have adopted a more stringent attitude toward managing IM use than they have applied to e-mail and phone calls. According to Meta Group, 68 percent of companies allow limited use of e-mail for non-work activity, but only 44 percent make similar concessions for IM. In addition, only 3 percent and 5 percent of companies surveyed prohibit pro·hib·it tr.v. pro·hib·it·ed, pro·hib·it·ing, pro·hib·its 1. To forbid by authority: Smoking is prohibited in most theaters. See Synonyms at forbid. 2. personal use of the phone and e-mail, respectively, but nearly 16 percent have banned the use of IM completely. A recent survey by ePolicy-AMA found that 60 percent of U.S. companies now use software to monitor incoming and outgoing external e-mail and that 27 percent of employers use software to track internal e-mail between employees. By contrast, employers have been relatively slow to monitor IM, with just 10 percent of companies surveyed indicating that they have taken steps to track desktop chat. Ted Tzirimis, a Meta Group analyst, recommends that more companies track IM use because the software potentially presents an even larger security threat than e-mail. To trigger an e-mail virus A virus that comes within an attached file in an e-mail message. When that file is opened, the virus does its damage. Macro viruses can come in Microsoft Word documents that are sent as e-mail attachments. , an individual must typically click on an e-mail attachment A file that rides along with an e-mail message. The attached file can be of any type. E-mail programs make it easy to attach a file. For example, in Eudora, all you do is select Attach from the Message menu, browse through the folder hierarchy to find the file you want and then double , but IM attacks can be transmitted and redistributed re·dis·trib·ute tr.v. re·dis·trib·ut·ed, re·dis·trib·ut·ing, re·dis·trib·utes To distribute again in a different way; reallocate. Adj. 1. automatically in seconds and without the same level of end-user participation. Another reason companies should protect themselves from IM-based threats: Meta says there is a high percentage of people using IM for file transfers, which represents a huge vulnerability. According to Tzirimis, organizations are still just beginning to realize the benefits of allowing IM in the workplace. "We believe that by 2008, most new employees will be assigned an IM account when they start a job, just as they are issued an e-mail account e-mail account n → cuenta de correo today," he says. |
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