“Secured IM,” developed by the Innovative IP Architecture Center at NTT Communications, is an instant messenger for business users. They said that their goal in developing the IM was to make IM more popular as a business tool by encrypting the entire communications path and thus eliminating security concerns.
Mr. Tokuno, from the Network Infrastructure Project, Innovative IP Architecture Center that developed this IM, says, “It’s true that it’s not common in Japan, but I think that being able to see the person’s status before exchanging messages is very business-oriented and helpful.”
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Satoshi Tokuno, from the Network Infrastructure Project, Innovative IP Architecture Center, which was in charge of developing Secured IM.
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Diagram of the Secured IM system and its use
In reality, IM tends to be considered a tool for heavy Internet users, primarily consumers, in Japan. However, its use as a business tool is widespread abroad. It is said that IM has become a necessary business communication tool that fills gaps left by earlier communication methods because it doesn’t put restraints on people’s time as much as telephone does, you can check a person’s status before contacting him/her, there is no spam like with e-mail, etc.
However, the movement to use IM for business is not so active in Japan. The biggest reason for this is that many companies’ security policies forbid their employees to use IM due to the security concerns of using third party’s services.
“Typically with IMs, servers managed by third party companies are used. In that case, when a message is sent from the company, it is being sent in plain text format. Another problem is that the systems administrator cannot manage the kinds of information being sent outside of the company from the inside. I also think that using typical IMs becomes a problem when files come into the company since it is difficult to block viruses and such,” says Mr. Tokuno.
It has fallen into a loop in that the use of IMs is not spreading because the security concerns such as stated above will never go away, so people do not realize how convenient it is as a business tool, which hinders the growth of IMs.
One of the means developed in order to break that loop is Secured IM. By using the Java-based client, encrypting communications between the client and server using TLS (Transport Layer Security), and using the Verio VPS, managed by NTT Communications, to store the data, security concerns can be alleviated.
Secured IM is currently still at the development stage and they plan to launch the actual service between spring and summer 2006. At first, it will only be offered as an add-on service to their hosting service, Verio. This is in order to promote the sales of their hosting service, but at the same time, they say that technical issues also play a big part. Secured IM supports both IPv4 and IPv6. They say that it is not difficult for IM client software to support IPv6. “The protocol that we are using [for Secured IM] is designed so that we don’t have to worry about whether it is IPv4 or IPv6. So, we were able to make it IPv6-ready without much difficulty,” says Mr. Tokuno.
What was difficult, they say, was the server. Verio is a rental server that uses a system known as VPS, a virtual server. Making a virtual server contain both IPv6 and IPv4 interfaces is a considerably advanced task, and this factor in and of itself can be a big advantage compared to other server rental companies.
NTT Com is promoting IPv6 as their company policy. However, when it comes to propagation of IPv6, the infrastructure first needs to be ready, and to have it ready requires a certain amount of usage. So it tends to become a chicken or egg story. Yet, at NTT Com, they are trying to break this cycle by supporting IPv6 as much as possible in terms of the services that they provide.
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Secured IM interface. The usability is the same as other IMs. They also plan to link it to VoIP in the future.
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It can be used from a cell phone. ItÃÔ a quasi-chat using a web interface; however, there is a big benefit in being able to use it from multiple devices using one account.
NTT Com Developed Secured IM with Contents Encryption
http://www.ipv6style.jp/en/news/2006/0125_nttcom.html
