Does Your Employer Ban Skype? 154
neutralino asks: "This morning, we received an company-wide email stating that the Max Planck Society (a German government funded research organization) has outlawed the use of P2P software at all of its institutes (including ours). The statement specifically singled out the use of Skype for internet telephony. The reasons given for this were that 'the exchanged data cannot be controlled' (therefore it might be illegal) and that 'Max-Planck or research resources in general might be abused, if "only" for commercial purposes.' This caught us by surprise, since many of us use VoIP to communicate with friends and family and collaborators, in our respective home countries. Is it now standard practice for companies, government organizations, and universities to outlaw Skype? Should it be?"
Skype for business. (Score:4, Interesting)
If Skype went evil (Score:5, Interesting)
The perfect spyware would punch through firewalls. Skype does just that for its legitimate purposes.
The perfect spyware would encrypt its outgoing communication. Skype does also.
The perfect spyware would be a program with plausible-sounding reasons to connect to unknown computers without notice. Skype has to do just that to take advantage of its supernode system.
The perfect spyware would be hard to reverse engineer. Skype refuses to run under SoftICE (apparently to inhibit development of competing clients).
In our own real world, Skype's been minding its own business. Nobody's lost a machine due to having Skype on it (at least not since the callto: buffer overflow). Nobody's reported suspicious activity in filemon while Skype was running. By normal standards it's trustworthy. But to a business which lives by "you can EXpect what you INspect" Skype is a terrifying unknown.
My employer *requires* skype (Score:2, Interesting)
Last year, we started recommending that employees use Skype for most routine meetings (most sensitive meetings are still recommended to use phone lines since people questioned Skype's author's previous company's business model).
Why skype? It was the best cross-platform (Mac & Windows & Linux) voice conference system we could find.
Banned in certain countries (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My employer *requires* skype (Score:3, Interesting)
End result: Huge savings.
We could ofcourse have used some other VOIP solution for the actual communication inside the company, but with the large partnernetwork needed a solution that people will be happy to adopt.. as they can use it for other communications too not only with us.
Yes and no (Score:3, Interesting)
Ban it? We require it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Of course (Score:4, Interesting)
As far as eating traffic if you only freeload (no local P2P supernodes) it eats 10-20% less traffic compared to an OpenVPN or IPSEC tunnel with a G729 call with VAD turned on. So if it is only one conversation Skype is more economical. Problem is elsewhere. If there are multiple conversations between people from the same company they traverse the company NAT to the sometimes different supernodes as relays and back. This is what wastes bandwidth.
On top of that Skype especially in a NAT environment is horrible to QoS. If you are obliged to provide a working VOIP environment this is the worst possible protocol. There is no protocol spec, there is no documentation, there is no way to keep state, there is no way to kill specific conversations to keep within bandwidth limits, so on so fourth.
To add to that, in a company environment it is important to have the VOIP integrate cleanly with the company directory, possibly CRM, voicemail, etc. You do not get anything even close with Skype. You get that from any VOIP PBX. Even Asterisk has that on offer. On top of that in many cases you are obliged to keep at least call records for compliance (if not the entire conversations). Nothing like that with Skype.
It is a good toy for the end-user masses. It should be banned in a company. If a company allows Skype this means that the sysadmin has no clue on all of the following counts - security, compliance, telephony, network/QoS.
My Employer forces us to use Skype (Score:2, Interesting)
(We have offices in three countries, so we make a LOT of overseas calls just within the company.)
Re:Banned in certain countries (Score:4, Interesting)
Short answer: yes (Score:1, Interesting)
Because of our bandwidth -- we have a very large pipe to the Australian network, and most of our desktops have gigabit ethernet -- any desktop running Skype is going to become a supernode. Because of our connection, we get charged a bucketload for data coming through our links. Combine the two, and basically, Skype would be getting us to pay for its traffic, with relatively little benefit to us.
It's a good idea, but the fact that it will grab bandwidth where it can and basically freeload means it would cost us more than it's worth.
All it will take is one user not following that policy for Skype to be banned outright, I believe
Re:Why is this modded Funny? (Score:1, Interesting)
but in my company, it is the same thing... plus we have web filters that block access to an incredible amount of websites, it is really an inconvenience... Plus all instant messaging is blocked by default. In order to use IM you need to specifically request which IM, which ID, and your conversation ARE recorded AND reviewed.
I am lucky for a few things... USB keys are possible, firefox is an authorized application, and they just authorized gaim so it doesn't look suspicious.
We do have ssh authorized with putty. I have Firefox portable, gaim portable, thunderbird portable installed on my USB key. First thing I do when i arrive at work in the morning, I run a putty session in the background, establish a ssh tunnel to a secret machine I have that goes to a sockd I have on a machine I own outside of the company network. From there, I have all my applications, Gaim, Thunderbird, Firefox, configured to use the SSH tunnel + sockd proxy on the other side for all my private needs... I must be the only one in the company to still have unrestricted access to anything I want...
I also use centericq when I want to be discrete in an ssh window... Good thing I have control over some Unix machines from which I have ssh access to the outside...
but yeah, it sucks... big time... when I joined the company I was SO frustrated at the restrictions... So i started to look at ways to go around them...
For what I am doing it is fine, nothing is time sensitive. I don't do p2p, I don't do VoIP so it is okay and it works fine... I've been doing this for 3 months now, and I can breath again...
If they discover me? Probably ground for layoff, though I wouldn't mind, I am currently interviewing and close to another job offer.
so, the moral of this?? Hmmm... if your company allow USB keys, portable [firefox|gaim|thunderbird|etc...] are your friends... You can even 'install' them on your local machine if you don't have admin privilege as there is nothing to install. Just unpack and run... But I do it on a USB on the back of my pc because it is discrete...
skype is suspect because bosses... (Score:1, Interesting)
All those places are pushing heavy (follow the latest telco propoganda) for the telcos to limit such things as skype, so, knowing how monopoly cartels work, they are assured this will happen, by law or otherwise. Even if some places are using things like skype, or open source freebie ware, they get *nervous* when big costs aren't associated with something, they instinctively think it's a con, or a dodge, or something that eventually will get them screwed. They simply can't conceive of themseves giving something useful away, so they assume anyone else doing it has to be insane or a crook or both. If it's a con or dodge THEY think up, swell, most of them will try it out, but someone elses, with the word "free", just gives them the trembling buckwheats. The telcos are a big part of most execs portfolios. They want to support their "investments". The telcos hates the skypes and vonages, and are much bigger, and older and more entrenched and more bluechip, hence, they are the "good guys" and "real businesses" to most (not all, but most) management/boss class investor types. Even when they take a flyer on something like a google, look what just happened when google posted a slightly smaller profit increase,(still huge but apparently not huge enough) most of those boss-class investor types bailed out screaming. Because in their minds they knew it was too good to be true, because deep down google doesn't charge money for searching, and they can never understand how not charging for something will ever work. Intellectually they might understand how it works, they will even drop a few of their extra poker chip money bucks on some stocks, but in their hearts they just don't get it, and are hard wired in their brains to *never* get it..
This is also why there is such a struggle to get open source adoption, management level stock portfolios, both in corporations and in government. They see the word "free" and they start to sweat, free means somehow they get no money in their eyes,or their drinking buddies at ye olde skull and bones brewery get no money, and big business and entrenched big government (it's the same really) is completely based on the profits at any cost, got to keep growing and kill the competition theory. If it can't be owned and closed off and exploited, it's a threat, even it's in an industry outside their own interests, they still have to preserve their "way of life" with "investments". Anything outside that club is..outside, the enemy, jumpstart interlopers.
It's easier if you think of it this way, managers and above and big politicians and entrenched bureaucrats (in net parlance this is called the "monied elite") are Ferengi, there are some things they are never going to "get" no matter what. They are not normal working level human in their outlook for the most part.(note, still very generally speaking, I am sure any number of immediate
To them, Bill Gates = good. They understand a fellow completely ruthless pirate. Part of the gang. Linus Torvalds (if they recognize the name) = someone who should be hung or deported at a minimum as a threat to society. A long established bell = "good" something like a skype is suspect. They don't get it, it must be e-vile.
I don't see this as terribly good or bad, just "is" is all. Been that way since the first cave dude offered wholesale clubs for trade at very great expense and would brain the competition with his expensive product.
Re:Of course they do ... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is exactly the reason we're banning Skype because it takes up Way too much bandwidth. The largest company is using it and they say it saves them a lot of money on phone bills, but thanks to them we spend all those savings on data communication lines.
Skype can save money, but only if it's more than what you need to pay for increased bandwidth.