Chapter 17. Instant Messaging

Instant messaging (IM) is becoming an increasingly popular means of communication these days—for both personal and business traffic. In this chapter we cover some of the most common problems with supporting the myriad features of IM clients, as well as all the different protocols such as AOL’s Instant Messenger (AIM), ICQ, Microsoft’s MSN, Yahoo, NetMeeting, and the open source GnomeMeeting client. We will also touch on the subject of what to do when your policy dictates that you need effective ways of blocking IM traffic with your firewall.

Common Questions/Problems

Q:

Should you be concerned about IM traffic in terms of security?

A:

In a nutshell—yes, absolutely. It’s a vector of data transmission just like e-mail, is ...

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