The wide spread use and easy availability
of public instant messaging services gives rise to regulatory issues
in health-related enterprises and financial institutions.
Here Comes HIPAA InstantMessagingPlanet.Com, March 31, 2003 In less than a month, new federal laws on patient information take effect --potentially bringing to a head the open holes exposed by unregulated public instant messaging use in healthcare-realted enterprises. The laws come as part of the bipartisan Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. The legislators and agencies behind HIPAA sought ways to make it easier for U.S. citizens to transfer their healthcare coverage from one insurance provider to another. But the practical implementation of better insurance portability also led to efforts to standardize the use and transfer of oral, printed, and electronic patient records -- including the stipulation that records are to be kept private by doctors, hospitals, researchers, insurance providers, and all others in the healthcare value chain who deal with patients' private data. "HIPAA basically requires that any oral, written, or electronic communications be captured and stored," said Jay Morrow, president and chief executive at healthcare consultancy Kimbel, Morrow & Associates. "What's really important for the covered entities to understand is that IM is covered under the law and needs to be stored"...Full Instant Messaging Planet.Com Story... 
Bankers Want Some FaceTime CRM vendor handles IM and regulatory concerns for businesses Line56, April 4, 2002 Instant messaging (IM) is making inroads into banking, according to FaceTime Communications, makers of IM software for businesses. The Foster City, Calif.-based company announced today that it landed a new client, Wachovia Securities, a financial services firm. FaceTime's IM Auditor enables real-time communications for institutional traders by leveraging public IM networks such as AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo!, as well as private IM networks. But it's not your everyday Internet chit-chat technology. Security and regulatory issues arise whenever traders communicate with other institutional traders; and with instant messages flying back and forth over the Internet, which often go unmonitored and unrecorded, the risks are even greater. Just ask Andy Nybo, analyst at market researcher TowerGroup. "The widespread use and easy availability of public IM services have caused financial services firms to take a hard look at the compliance issues surrounding instant messaging with clients," he said. "Although many firms have turned a blind eye to the use of these services in the past, the pressure from regulators and the potential for abuse of company resources have forced securities firms to re-evaluate internal instant messaging policies." To this end, FaceTime IM Auditor runs on a server that sits behind the corporate firewall, enabling companies to manage and monitor instant messages regardless of the IM network they're on. The software provides compliance, access and identity-management controls. Moreover, FaceTime IM Auditor has an export capability, meaning users can send complete IM conversations as emails to clients and data storage systems...Full Line56 Story... 
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