Symantec Secures and Manages Enterprise Instant Messaging

Symantec Secures and Manages Enterprise Instant Messaging

Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced Symantec IM Manager 8.0, the market-leading secure instant messaging (IM) and real-time communications (RTC) management solution that enables organizations to control the use of public IM services and enterprise RTC platforms and manage compliance with legal and corporate governance policies. A key component of Symantec’s Enterprise Messaging Management solution portfolio, Symantec IM Manager is scheduled to be available in North America in April.

“Corporate adoption of IM has been growing at more than 200 percent per year,” said Carlin Wiegner, senior director of Messaging and Web Security solutions at Symantec. “And with this increase in usage come security risks and compliance requirements. Enterprises need a way to secure, manage, and archive all aspects of enterprise messaging while also insuring compliance with IT policies and government regulations. With Symantec IM Manager, organizations have the ability to fully leverage the benefits of real-time communication while protecting their infrastructure from security and compliance risks.”

IDC estimates that enterprise IM will grow from 40 million users today to more than 140 million by 2009, making IM the fastest growing communications medium of all time. The speed and scale of this growth has outpaced IT administrators’ ability to deploy security and management solutions, providing a new avenue for malicious code. To date, most corporate IM usage remains unmonitored and unprotected and the infection of one computer can result in the rapid proliferation of viruses, worms, and spyware within corporate environments. The real-time nature of IM combined with attacks that leverage social engineering techniques make IM threats highly destructive and costly to an infrastructure.

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