Unmanaged use of P2P file sharing exposes corporations to serious business risks, including loss of confidential information, viruses, worms, spyware, and legal liability. Although enterprises have invested in protecting the network perimeter from external security threats, employees have the ability to easily circumvent security measures with P2P file sharing services.

Legal liability issues abound with P2P use. Downloaded material is frequently pornographic, hate related or copyright protected. The Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America have specifically targeted corporations threatening legal action unless they take steps to prevent copyright infringement.

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Like public IM clients, P2P clients are freely downloadable and are specifically designed to evade network security by employing port scanning, tunneling and other hacker-like techniques. P2P file sharing is not port specific, so blocking it at the firewall becomes extremely difficult. And since P2P file sharing protocols are not standards-based, they are extremely difficult for network administrators to control, or even detect.

The Akonix Enforcer detects P2P activity and allows IT administrators to choose who can and can’t use it. Unauthorized user's P2P and IM traffic is blocked at the perimeter, without the need of installing software on user's desktops.