A “Skype-buster” at the rescue of corporate bandwidths
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Skype is a kind of superhero. Its core, its heart is too dark to be readable or to copy. It’s too darn good for scanning agents, sneak “à la Neo in Matrix” through firewalls, while remaining almost invisible to corporate network sheriffs. And it carries this message, this prophecy, that one day, “the whole world can talk for free”… No way!, say big companies. Skype overuses the company bandwidth because of its peer-to-peer nature and weakens the network security level by possibly opening back doors then exploited by virus.
No, that’s too much threats. And some security software makers, like SurfControl, start proposing solutions to this softphone technology now worth more than $2.6 billion. This company, so far used to detect phishing tentatives and intrusion of malwares, recently introduced a Skype detector upgrade for its Enterprise Threat Shields (ETS) monitoring software.
In a statement, SurfControl explains why Skype should be taken carefully: “Think of it this way: Skype is an unmonitored, largely anonymous P2P protocol service, meaning that the person you’re calling, or receiving calls from, can introduce threats — such as worms and viruses — into the network and no one would know. You may say, ‘we have anti-virus to handle that’ but that’s only one part of the overall problem. Skype also allows undetectable file sharing and IM, greatly facilitating the ease at which the transfer of company confidential information and intellectual property can leave the organization. No anti-virus product on the market is capable of monitoring user behavior.”
Unfortunately, the ETS Skype-buster enable works well only on Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003. On this platform, it should be fully efficient to catch and monitor unauthorized Skype usage on the corporate network. Even, as SurfControl claims, if users uninstall and reinstall the application repeatedly to avoid scanning detection. This should be something that Chinese government might be interested in.
(read)
Mar 24, 2006 | By Nuno
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