[Web4lib] IM Security

[J.P.Knight]

On Tue, 6 Mar 2007, Andrew Hankinson wrote:
> I had exactly the same reservations with that statement... IM is no more 
> inherently insecure than any other protocol.  I do remember, to be fair, 
> reading an article on how Skype 'punches' through firewalls, but that's about 
> the only thing I can think of.

We banned Skype on campus for a while, mostly because of the protocol's 
desire at one point to find high bandwidth sites (such as University 
campuses!) to become "supernodes" in the Skype network that would have 
large amounts of non-University related traffic funneled through them. 
That would have potentially adversely affected the service we could 
provide to other, non-Skype users on our network connection and may well 
have been infringing several usage agreements for our network connection 
as well.

These days things have moved on and the ban has been lifted, but 
be aware that your techies may well have valid technical reasons for 
saying "no" based on the technologies that you have widely deployed.  Best 
to ask them (or their bosses) for a detailed report of the security issues 
involved so that you can see if they can be addressed.  Techies *love* 
writing such reports... :-) :-)