User group to tackle IM in the workplace

An instant messaging (IM) focus group for users has been launched to tackle the problems of security and interoperability for enterprise IM.

Employee use of consumer IM packages is a major issue for financial services firms, where it is a common trading tool for bankers and traders, and firms are under pressure from a raft of compliance legislation such as Basel II and Sarbanes-Oxley to implement much tighter controls and monitoring around IM.

In response to this, European not-for-profit e-business association Eema will launch an IM focus group with a meeting next week in London for members and non-members to formulate a strategy for managing enterprise IM. Topics covered will include security, compliance and "spim" – IM spam.

Roger Dean, head of special projects at Eema, said in a statement: "IM provides great opportunities for increased collaboration and productivity. The ease of installation and its ubiquity makes IM attractive to users. However, its deployment frequently circumvents corporate IT usage policies and controls."

Graham Yellowley, director of technology at Tokyo-Mitsubishi bank, said the focus group will only be successful if it can drive industry standards so that, for example, an AOL IM client can talk to a Yahoo! IM client.

"In addition financial services need a complete audit trail and an alert mechanism based on word content for compliance purposes," he said.

JP Rangaswami, global CIO at investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, said his company is happy to assist the Eema focus group but he warned that the IM issue is a worldwide one.

"I think that people have to realise that such things are very difficult to execute unless run globally. Most regulatory requirements placed on IT create large burdens of complexity because of a lack of coordination amongst regional/national bodies."

Indeed, other bodies addressing enterprise IM problems already exist, such as the sector-specific Financial Services Instant Messaging Association (Fima).