Symantec Corp.

• Position: COMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT - Brief article

Symantec Corp. has released Symantec IM Manager 8.0, which the Cupertino, Calif., company calls a secure instant messaging (IM) and real-time communications (RTC) management solution--one that enables organizations to control the use of public IM services and enterprise RTC platforms and manage compliance with legal and corporate governance policies. Symantec IM Manager is a key component of Symantec's Enterprise Messaging Management solution portfolio.

IDC estimates that enterprise IM will grow from 40 million users today to more than 140 million by 2009, which would make 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 computer code.

To date, most corporate IM traffic 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...