Do you block IM at your company either via policy, via technical controls like firewall or web filters, or all of the above?

Are you sure you’re blocking IM?

Let me remind you we’re in what is gaggingly called the Web 2.0 years. Are you still certain about your answer?

I’ve mentioned Meebo.com in the past as a web-based way to connect to all your favorite IM services. Yikes, that’s scary enough to block in the firewall and filters, right? Well, now you can plop little plugins into blog services like Blogspot that will allow you to chat away with a friend. This is only a small skip (the hop, step, and jump have already been done!) away from being able to use outbound and inbound IM from any arbitrary website that you control.

If you’ve not revisited the business cases for IM lately, you might want to do so and start realizing the IM is going to be as prevalent as cell phones (and phones in general) in our lives moving forward. There is little sense to fight that, but every sense to get your organization used to having a centralized IM system or centralized standards.

PS: Yes, I saw this traffic because my IPS flagged it for me, thankfully.