Chat Monitoring Introduction

Instant messaging can be a benefit to business when used properly, but IM is often abused by employees and poses significant liability and security risks.

The free consumer IM client programs like AIM, Yahoo! and MSN messenger are widely used. It also pose many security concerns. Consumer IM programs often support more than just simple text-based chat. They may also include peer to peer file transfer capabilities, which can pose security risks in two ways. Internal users can send documents that may be confidential out of your network, circumventing your network's perimeter defenses against file sharing programs or e-mail attachments. On the other hand, external users can send files that might contain viruses or malicious code to users on the internal network. In addition, a liability risk arises if employees use the file transfer feature to share copyrighted music, movie or software files in violation of the law.

So it is necessary for corporations to monitor messenger usage and set rules for acceptable messenger usage.

Using WFilter to manage messenger usage and monitor chat.

Key features:

• Monitor and archive AIM, ICQ, Yahoo!, MSN/Live messenger usage and chat contents.
• Record files transfered by messengers.
• Implement a policy to block certain messengers and user accounts.
• Implement a policy to block file transfers via messengers.
• You only need to install WFilter in ONE computer to monitor your whole network.
• Learn more about WFilter..