M.D. Lampert
December 5th 03, 02:50 PM
I am the partner responsible for the computer systems at our business and
am vehemently opposed to instant messenging (and chat room access, etc.)
on any mission-critical workstations or networks. I will not allow it to
be installed on our office network... and to date, touch wood, we have
never been infected by a virus, trojan, malicious code, etc. We have
indeed been fortunate due to my totally anal outlook on installed
software and on our dilligence.
At home, our shared workstation is used by myself for "mission critical"
business applications... and it is used by my kids (age 10 and 12) for
browsing the internet (semi-supervised; the computer room door is always
open while they are on the internet,etc.)
Lately, I have been absolutely besieged to install MSN Messenger Service
which I finally relented and did this evening. Now I am having some
serious doubts as to exactly how wise a decision this was. This is one
SCAREY looking piece of software!
Is there a white paper anywhere on the current security issues with MSN
Messenger? One thing that I would like to do for sure is turn off the
ability to receive file transfers. I can't see how it is done.
We are running Windows NT4 on this workstation (soon to be upgraded to XP
Pro when the workstation is replaced) and using ZoneAlarm for firewall
protection (soon to be replaced by a hardware firewall). Running
InoculateIT as well and it is always up to date and running both in
real-time and doing a drive scan nightly. I know enough to ignore and
delete unexpected file attachments.... the kids, however... well, the
kids are just kids.
So.... any white papers on MSN Messenger Security? Any opinions or
experiences anyone would care to share with this worried dad? Thanks in
advance.
MDL
am vehemently opposed to instant messenging (and chat room access, etc.)
on any mission-critical workstations or networks. I will not allow it to
be installed on our office network... and to date, touch wood, we have
never been infected by a virus, trojan, malicious code, etc. We have
indeed been fortunate due to my totally anal outlook on installed
software and on our dilligence.
At home, our shared workstation is used by myself for "mission critical"
business applications... and it is used by my kids (age 10 and 12) for
browsing the internet (semi-supervised; the computer room door is always
open while they are on the internet,etc.)
Lately, I have been absolutely besieged to install MSN Messenger Service
which I finally relented and did this evening. Now I am having some
serious doubts as to exactly how wise a decision this was. This is one
SCAREY looking piece of software!
Is there a white paper anywhere on the current security issues with MSN
Messenger? One thing that I would like to do for sure is turn off the
ability to receive file transfers. I can't see how it is done.
We are running Windows NT4 on this workstation (soon to be upgraded to XP
Pro when the workstation is replaced) and using ZoneAlarm for firewall
protection (soon to be replaced by a hardware firewall). Running
InoculateIT as well and it is always up to date and running both in
real-time and doing a drive scan nightly. I know enough to ignore and
delete unexpected file attachments.... the kids, however... well, the
kids are just kids.
So.... any white papers on MSN Messenger Security? Any opinions or
experiences anyone would care to share with this worried dad? Thanks in
advance.
MDL