Risks and Rewards of Instant Messaging in the Banking Sector

Instant Messaging (IM) was the first IP based mass communication application rolled out by users, rather than management, who saw immediate business value in this new form of communication. However IM opens up a variety of risks, especially in the Banking and Securities sector of the market and poses some serious legal and regulatory challenges. This paper seeks to explain these risks and to recommend current best practice for addressing them. This is to block all of these services at the proxy servers using a blocking product and then to selectively allow properly controlled and authorized IM and P2P services to take place through an IM enabling gateway.