How do you get your head around ‘risk’?

Businesses have started to realize understanding risk isn’t just about working out what security vulnerabilities or weaknesses need to be shored up, but about finding a point of balance where performance is not compromised by too little or too heavy-handed a consideration of liabilities. Whether or not staff are using IM, or breaching email usage policies or bringing their iPod to work or leaking vital intellectual property – these are all issues that should have been addressed ahead of time by IT as well as HR, legal and line managers.

ZDNet-Asia News

Google to Acquire Postini

Google Inc announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Postini, a global leader in on-demand communications security and compliance solutions serving more than 35,000 businesses and 10 million users worldwide. Postini’s services – which include message security, archiving, encryption and policy enforcement – can be used to protect a company’s email, instant messaging (IM) and other Web-based communications.

Business Wire News

REVIEW: Yet another instant messenger application: Inlux Messenger

Verdict (by Werner Ruotsalainen):

If you can live with the restrictions and/or you need the settable codepage support or the excellent, fine-tunable notification capabilities, you may want to give it a try. Otherwise, you may want to prefer other clients, particularly if you need for example Jabber / AIM support, auto-logging and conferencing capabilities, multiple logins or, as with Live Messenger, native file / voice clip transfer.

Full Review details and screen shots here. [Smartphone and PocketPC Mag]

Inlux Messenger Download [in Russian]

TinyBuddy IM: Instant Messaging for iPhone

Have an iPhone, but wish you could IM your buddies? Now you can, with TinyBuddy IM. It is an AIM® Enabled web-based IM tool. It works by using the Web AIM API, OpenAuth and Dojo.

The nice thing about this solution: you do not send your AIM password to me -- you are redirected to AOL's OpenAuth servers for authentication. My JavaScript only sees an auth token. Furthermore, my web page has to get your explicit consent before accessing your buddy list data and before sending the first IM or presence change.

So the price of this added security is pop-up windows. A new window will be popped so you can authenticate with the OpenAuth servers, and also when giving consent to the application to access your buddy list and IM. For the consent prompts, you can choose "Grant Always" to avoid them on subsequent logins. I think the pop-ups are worth the added security, and at least in iPhone's Safari, window popping looks neat. Unfortunately, the OpenAuth Sign In and Consent pages are made for larger windows, so you will have to double-tap zoom to read them.

More by James Burke at http://tagneto.blogspot.com

iPhone gets Instant Messaging: Trillian Astra for iPhone!

One of the most frequent cause of rants about the iPhone seems about to be solved: Cerulean Studios are working on porting their Trillian Astra cross-protocol instant messenger to Macs and to the iPhone.
IM on the iPhone

Not only that, but they have also started a public alpha testing program. Yes, the application is growing rapidly, and yes, you might get lucky and get to use it soon.

Click on for a big, juicy shot and for some more details. [Coolest-gadgets.com]

IM at Work, Part 2: Tools for Locking Down

Applications such as IM, Skype, and Web conferencing can deliver significant business value to business users. However, they can also introduce three main kinds of business risks: inbound threats, outbound leakage and regulatory and e-discovery non-compliance. The challenge is that many organizations have a mix of both public IM usage and enterprise IM usage.

Technology News

IM users to get etiquette lessons

Business people can now find out whether they should be talking to their boss using instant messaging (IM), or when the best time is to phone customers, with the help of some 21st century etiquette lessons.

The Finishing Academy - which specializes in business and social etiquette - has produced the Business and Communications Etiquette Guide in association with Microsoft, which looks at getting the best out of communications at work.

More at Silicon.com

Instant Messaging attacks increase 723 percent in Q1

Gartner predicts that all enterprises will be using Instant Messenger (IM) by 2010, which should send alarm bells ringing as IM attacks have increased by more than 700 percent in the past year.

The analyst group predicts that penetration levels for enterprise-grade IM will rise from around 25 percent today to nearly 100 percent by the end of the decade.

ZDNet Asia