Summary of the Seminar: Instant Messaging, why not?

The seminar started with an excellent metaphor of our host Joost Bellaart in which he made a comparison between communication in sports and in business. Joost was our host during the whole seminar and introduced every speaker to the audience.   The first speaker was Mr. Adrian Davis who is a member of the management team of the Information Security Forum that is fully independent. The ISF researches and resolves key issues in information security. They did an ISF Instant Messaging Project in which they describe the key risks associated with IM and provided members with key security steps to secure IM services. In his presentation he divided the issues in three areas: application, infrastructure and organization. He concluded his presentation with pointing out a process for securing instant messaging.

The second speaker was Johan Koopman of IBM. In his presentation he explained that Lotus software focuses on the human side of business, with solutions that empower people to collaborate, to learn, and to take full advantage of their collective knowledge, wherever they work, and across all organizational boundaries. He also mentioned that the platform of Lotus Sametime is based on three concepts: Awareness, Conversation and Web conferences, pointed out the benefits of instant messaging and web conferences, showed its value, and gave various examples of web conferences. He closed his presentation with some interesting business cases of big companies like United Airlines.

The third speaker was Sasa Radosevic who is EMEA Product Manager at Sybari. He discussed Sybari’s recent IM survey, in-the-wild IM worms, potential threats and enterprise IM. He first told about the threats, and then continued with talking about the preventative measures that a company should follow. Companies should create policies and put in technical safeguards. They should review the business necessity and utilize products with enterprise features. He explained why companies should consider securing IM with Sybari’s antigen for IM and IM Logic.

Derek O’Carroll who is MD EMEA of IMLogic was the last speaker of the Seminar. In his presentation he discussed Public IM Control and Sametime Integration. He showed how instant messaging usage creates powerful business benefits. He also mentioned the IM security risks and gave a checklist when deploying IBM Sametime/ Workplace. He explained how to protect the organization with security and usage controls, how to manage IM to drive results, how to archive and comply and finally, he gave the reasons why IMLogic can deliver a solution architected for the enterprise.