Capturing instant messages

[Ed Leafe]

On Jul 18, 2006, at 3:17 PM, Yu-Xi Lim wrote:

> This is going to be quite off-topic.

	But helpful nonetheless.

> I'm not entirely familiar with SOX regulations. Is it necessary to
> capture it at the gateway?

	I'm no lawyer either, so I probably know as much about this as you  
do. It was the client who proposed this type of solution; I'm in the  
process of figuring out if it's at all possible.

> The best solution would be to provide logging
> at the individual chat clients. Piecing together conversation threads
> from individual packets while filtering out other non-chat junk can be
> extremely tedious.

	I got the impression that they want to capture the IM traffic and  
record it somewhere JIC they are ever audited or subpoenaed, but that  
most of it would never get looked at again.

> I understand the standard AIM client doesn't provide logging. Probably
> won't any time soon, since it wasn't made for enterprise. There are
> enterprise gateways for AIM, but I'm not sure of the cost or other
> deployment issues. (Try looking at Jabber) You should consider  
> those. Or
> a switch to a more enterprise-friendly protocol if that's possible.
>
> Other alternatives would be to use a better client. Multi-protocol
> clients like GAIM, Trillian, Miranda, and Adium X generally provide
> logging. Most provide the ability to toggle logging for specific
> sessions, thus reducing privacy issues.

	Thanks for the suggestions; I'll run them by the client. They don't  
want to do it at the individual desktop level; they want a central  
location to ensure that someone doesn't have the capability to  
disable the logging, so perhaps an enterprise gateway might be a  
better solution.

-- Ed Leafe
-- http://leafe.com
-- http://dabodev.com