The most recent poll over at Messaging Pipeline has found that people are taking action to make their IM systems more secure. Nearly 24% of those polled have moved instant messaging services to secure private enterprise systems.

IM has become the latest hole in the security dike surrounding corporate networks, and that's no surprise because while the public systems, including AOL's Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger, are popular and easy to use, they're as good as nothing when it comes to security of your networks. In fact they're not even that good because they have no way to protect you from worm attacks. the emerging new class of spam for instant messaging called "spim," and of course the phishing attacks that have "discovered" instant messaging.

This comes not too long after I talked about the rising threat of IM Phishing - apparently, I am not the only one noticing the rising in spim. And it's good that action is being taken. Still, 24% is a small number when it comes to being secure, especially in the corporate setting. In addition, 22% of those polled have eliminated IM as the security solution, and this is perhaps the wrong move.

As the article noted, IM has really amazing business benefits. It allows you another level of interaction in the business environment. Virtual meetings, group meetings, or just quick and seamless Q&A with co-workers comes along with the use of IMs in the corporate setting. I also think it is great for team-building; I have noted that just being able to chat with my coworkers online has helped us build a more cohesive team overall.

Presence-based messaging, including instant messaging, is on the rise. But systems have to be secure in order for their benefits to be fully realized and the growing number of private systems shown by our survey addresses that problem. The cost of those solutions is apparently less of an objection than it was nearly a year ago when we did a similar survey.

That's a good thing, and one that will make the next year or two very interesting as various presence technologies and security systems that protect them emerge.