Akonix L7 secures instant messaging, peer-to-peer

Elinor Mills Abreu

SAN FRANCISCO: A San Diego company announced a product on Monday designed to

make instant messaging and peer-to-peer file sharing applications safer to use

by blocking viruses and preventing data from leaking out and back doors from

being installed.

Privately held Akonix Systems Inc. developed Akonix L7 specifically to

address the security concerns that are arising from the widespread use of

programs like AOL Time Warner Inc.'s Instant Messenger (AIM) and the Kazaa

peer-to-peer programs.

Those programs give outsiders a way into a computer inside an otherwise

secure network. Instant messaging programs used to only allow people to send

text back and forth, but now allow users to exchange data files, which can do

nasty things on the recipient's end. In peer-to-peer networks, users allow other

people to reach into their hard drives and copy specific data, like music files.

Despite the security concerns of the programs, which allow data to flow

through the same data transmission channel on computers as Internet traffic and

thus can not be blocked, their use is increasing exponentially, just like e-mail

did in the 1990s.

Research firm Jupiter Media Metrix estimates that more than 100 million

people use some form of instant messaging program to exchange real-time messages

with friends or co-workers. And millions more swap music and other types of

files over peer-to-peer networks, which were popularized by Napster, experts

say.

Viruses already hitting



Experts have predicted it was only a matter of time until viruses and other
malicious programs wormed their way into those systems.

In May, antivirus vendors warned of a virus, dubbed Benjamin, that was being

spread to Kazaa users. On Friday, a study from Hewlett-Packard Co. revealed that

misconfigured Kazaa software could expose sensitive files on a user's hard drive

to other people.

"Instant messaging puts a big old hole through our firewall as far as

viruses getting through," said Mike Irick, assistant director of academic

computing at California State University San Marcos. "I've had a few

viruses get through."

To keep viruses from hitting professors' and students' computers at the

school, Irick is beta testing Akonix L7, which sits at the perimeter of an

organization's network, monitoring and logging the traffic, and scanning it for

viruses and other malicious code.

Another beta tester is the New York office of ING, The Hague-based financial

conglomerate, where portfolio managers and brokers use AIM to send messages back

and forth about different stock trades, said Kristoffer Stack, vice president

and director of network infrastucture.

ING is concerned that regulators, who require financial institutions to

archive all their data, will eventually require them to record and store their

instant messaging communications too, he said.

"From an IT (information technology) perspective I would prefer they not

use instant messaging, but they insisted it was critical to business,"

Stack said. Because of the security concerns, a lot of organizations are trying

to ban its use, said Richard Stiennon, research director for network security at

market research firm Gartner.

There are other instant messaging applications designed with security in mind

tailored for the financial services community, but like all the instant

messaging programs, they do not allow users to communicate with anyone outside

of that network.

AOL, in partnership with VeriSign Inc., is slated to release a corporate

version of its AIM later this year that encrypts the messages. But, experts said

encrypting the traffic would prevent network administrators from distinguishing

between safe messages and dangerous ones.

A version of Akonix L7 that secures instant messaging programs will be

released to the public in late June, followed by one for peer-to-peer programs

in late summer, the company said.

(C) Reuters Limited.