'Organizations are embracing IM because they see increased benefits from communication, collaboration and reduction in cost,' he said.

However, IM is potentially a risk factor for businesses because the increased use of it attracts virus writers and hackers to target IM.

'This is largely because IM is an unprotected method of communication, whereas email is fairly secure at this point,' said Weiner.

In the last couple of years there have been a number of worms that have been very successful in using IM as a vector to spread, he said.

Symantec released IM Manager 8.0 in New Zealand last week. Weiner said that IM Manager integrates easily with existing tools such as directory infrastructure.