IM status: More worms on the way

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Unknowing end users are the main conduit for IM disasters

Yes, a more secure and "all knowing" OS would be great but it may be a long way to perfection.

I always shuddered at the thought of the inevitable onslaught of IM virus/worm/social engineering threats.

Remember when email went from text to become a bulk file transport system? I remember lobbying my bosses to use FTP to transfer files. The reply was, "Sunny, it is much easier to just attach it to mail, now lift those caps on message size right now." I am a team player so I bit my tongue and followed the directive. The result was lots of people banging on the dancing elves and infecting their systems. Even better were the mails telling them to delete this file or that since some some admin asst "found" a file that had a teddy bear icon so that must be a virus when in fact it was a helpful exe provided by MS -- social engineering. Now we have tools to better control this stuff as well as tighter security policies so the trheat through email is not as severe as it used to be. But it took a few years and countless hours of fix-up as well the dollars invested in tools top mitigate.

Now we will go through this cycle with IM. My question is why should we embrace sending files through IM? Why not use FTP? Why not consider the ramifications of making IM a bulk file transport system before unleashing this on a unsuspecting and largely unknowing public? It is hard to blame end users who view this like a cell phone text message and it is not unique to MS products, you can do the same with non-MS IM, right?

Posted by: Sunny Jalolly   Posted on: 03/22/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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