White Papers for Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA)

Instant Messaging, VoIP, P2P, and Games in the Workplace: How to Take Back Control

Sophos

IT departments have long understood the need to prevent viruses, spyware and other malicious applications or activity from compromising security and disrupting business continuity.

Now the rapid emergence of Web 2.0 is beginning to redefine how individuals interact with the internet, and the related technologies pose a range of new threats. Web-savvy users who have local administration rights for their work computers are downloading applications such as Instant Messaging (IM), peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services to help them communicate, share files and work collaboratively online – for both official and unofficial business.

In September 2006, a Sophos online poll asked IT administrators to evaluate what kind of software applications they would like to prevent their users from being able to access and use. The results reveal that administrators have a clear desire to be able to exert more control and to prevent users from installing and using unwanted applications. For example, 86.1 percent of respondents said they would like the opportunity to block VoIP applications which allow internet telephony, with 62.8 percent going even further and indicating that blocking is essential.

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