Informal face-to-face (FTF) communication has been shown to serve many important functions in organizations, including complex coordination, problem solving, and social learning. Early attempts to create tools to support informal communication focused on audio and video environments. However, these attempts have not been widely adopted for several reasons, including lack of support for primary user tasks, cost, privacy concerns, and implementation difficulties. Instant messaging (IM), on the other hand, is of great interest in the modern community today because it is a tool that successfully supports informal communication. The modern workplace is inherently collaborative, and this collaboration relies on effective communication between colleagues. According to Woodard, she noted that with the introduction of the Internet, much of communication has taken place through the screen of our computer monitors or even through our phones. She further notes that the world has become a small global village and the Internet today is the highway that connects every house, organization and institution in this fist-sized world. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay One of the most serious threats to businesses that allow unsupervised use of instant messaging involves the potential loss of confidential data, whether it be proprietary business information or customer or employee information. sensitive. data. Public IM clients generally do not include an encryption option, so any information shared in an IM conversation is at risk of being intercepted. Employees may be sitting across the room from each other, but the IM messages that pass between them leave and re-enter the network through the company's firewall and then into the "cloud" that is the Internet, and vice versa. In the corporate environment, there is a risk of misuse. People in workplaces may use IMs while working, intercept or disclose information when conducting several different IM conversations at once, and spend time chatting with friends and wasting time or even bring a possible virus from outside. There are also some security risks, such as instant message content that may accidentally send a message to the wrong person. As a result, sensitive data such as customer list and sales reports may be exposed on the Internet. The lack of clear ICT policies and regulations governing the use of IM is also a major barrier to the effective use of IM in the workplace. Many organizations install and deploy instant messaging features to their employees without having formal policies or guidelines in place and without providing training to their users. Since many people are familiar with instant messaging for personal and social communication, there is a major risk that they will use the same form of communication in the workplace, which may or may not be appropriate. There are many benefits to using instant messaging. It connects people regardless of where they actually are. In the company, colleagues can.