Instant Messaging, IM, is a tool that offers direct and instant
communication between users. This has rendered IM the place
as one of the most important office tools today together with
phone and e-mail communication. IM offers, in contrast to email,
real-time communication between its users. It is possible
to directly see who else is on-line and it becomes natural to
directly contact other people to ask questions and discuss
various topics. Project meetings and open and closed conferences
are easy to set up by individual users when needed.
Most companies do not have their own IM system in place and
with the growing popularity of instant messaging, users are
forced to rely on external IM servers on the Internet for exchange
of, often internal, information.
This is quickly becoming a security
threat in many organizations that have no alternative to offer
their users.
The AppGate IM server is an add-on module to the
AppGate Security Server that can be used to offer users a secure
IM system, which is controlled by the own organization.
The system offers the following functionality:
- Private chats and file transfers between users.
- Group chats, i.e. creation of “chat rooms” or group
conferences between more than two users.
- Chat rooms can be created when needed by any user in the
system. The creator can decide who is allowed to enter the
room by assigning it a password.
- Chat rooms can be configured to be “on invitation only”, i.e.
a user must explicitly be invited to be able to participate.
- Chat rooms are normally deleted when the last user leaves
the room.
- Persistent chat rooms can be created where the room exists
for several days and the owner explicitly must delete it from
the server.
- Moderated chat rooms where some users (participants) are
able to post messages and other users (visitors) just can
read what is being said.
- Possibility to log a conversation in a chat room. Logging is
controlled by the creator of the room.
All communication over the network is encrypted. This is
important for both local and remote users when they connect to
the system over insecure networks and when they need to know
who the other participants are. Access to the IM system can be
granted to all or just to selected users, for example based on
their role as defined in the AppGate Server’s authorization
database. Once connected to the AppGate Security Server, the
user does not have to be re-authenticated when connecting to
the IM service (i.e. secure single sign-on.)
The AppGate solution enables organizations to take control of
Instant Messaging. Instead of having users connect to external
servers on the Internet, the AppGate Secure IM server makes it
possible to set up a secure internal IM system.
The protocols being used are open, public, and easily understandable
by firewalls. The AppGate client is written in Java to
support the largest possible range of systems, everything from
Windows and Unix/Linux systems to hand-held devices is
supported and, in addition, other third party clients can be used
if desired. All user administration is done at the AppGate server
where access to the IM application is handled just like access to
any other application in the network. The additional administration
the IM system introduces is therefore virtually none.
The AppGate IM solution is based on the well-known Jabber
protocol (www.jabber.org). The use of open standards also
ensures that other third party clients will work with the system.