Checkpoint firewall blocks Skype

by Chris Dawson

This post was written in September 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

Mis-use of the Internet at work is a growing concern for many companies. Not only does it fritter away hours of employee’s time the company is paying for but there’s a justifiable of virus and hacking vulnerabilities being introduced to the network.

Checkpoint, a major firewall and security company, have just raised the bar with the announcement that Checkpoint Firewalls can now block Skype. That’s no free calls, no instant messaging chats and no file transfer through Checkpoint Firewall. One of Skypes main benefits (for users) has always been that it can be installed and used behind a firewall and it just works.

With Checkpoint blocking Skype the free and easy days could be coming to an end. Where one security vendor goes others are sure to follow, but doubtless Skype’s engineers will be busy figuring out new ways for Skype to work inspite of Firewalls trying to block their efforts.

Tags for this post: , ,
Author: Chris Dawson
Posted at: Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Filed Under Uncategorized
 

Comments

One Response to “Checkpoint firewall blocks Skype”

  1. Skype is ten years out of date : TameBay on September 26th, 2007 5:09 pm

    [...] What prompted me to recall my instant messaging past was the news that firewalls are now able to block Skype traffic and prevent users on corporate networks communicating with the outside world. I didn’t have that problem in the old days I couldn’t even install the softare in the first place. Most of the companies I worked for locked users PCs so that they couldn’t download and install applications (It constantly amazes me that companies don’t do the same today!). The inability to install wasn’t a problem because my then favourite Instant Messaging client, Yahoo! Messenger, had a web browser based version. [...]

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