Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Is Skype Ok to use Office Computer running AC ?

Hi, I would like to use Skype on my office computer running AC--any security issues ? or other issues I have not thought of ?

There are some issues, you will just have to figure out what you are comfortable with from a risk perspective. Details Here

If you are using it to communicate for medical reasons, you may need access to your network, otherwise, you could take other approaches to minimize the risks to your network.

The easiest solution is to Skype from a mobile device like a Nexus 7 or 10 - most of the attacks are designed to run against Windows, much less mobile devices [currently].

Other options are to connect the machine to a DMZ so that it is isolated from your network and run as a NON-Administrator account.

Better is to recycle an old machine, install Ubuntu or Fedora on the old beast and run Skype or other software on that machine where your risks are much lower. Most everyone has a old machine that they can give new life to, while also protecting their patient data and network.

So, fastest is to spend $200-$400 for a Nexus.

To simplify one of the key issues about Skype is that once it is installed on a machine, it becomes a node on their network and consumes bandwidth and CPU carrying the load for the network operations.

That alone was why Skype is banned from most SMB and enterprise networks.

It depends on how you use it. It has the capability of utilizing the Internet. That would, petty much by definition, be a security risk but mainly a HIPAA problem.

See this thread.

This is very recent, and I think you will find it very helpful. I think the concensus is that IPMSG with the simplest and best, although Borg Chat supposedly has more features. I have used IPMSG for eight years, and it has not lost a connection to the server yet.

These messengers are for intranet communication, and therefore, are not security threats. They also have log files so all messages are recorded.

Thanks for all the info--I like the idea of recycling one of my old computers as a stand alone for single use -- just for Skyping (using Linux)

ps old dinosaurs can be repurposed

Nothing like teaching old dinosaurs new tricks.

Once you have a utility Linux machine chugging along, it is easy enough to go into the admin tools and add random services that you can play with. A practical use is to add DNS services if you aren't otherwise using a server, and that way you can blacklist Facebook, YouTube, etc and then point certain machines to your internal DNS server. Web server is super easy as well.

Well if it's for intra office messaging. IPMSG is good. If you want to use it for communication via the Internet, you could always run it in a VM if you don't want to hook up another computer for one purpose. Just remember it's no different from using a physical machine in the sense that a virus could propagate via the network just as it would on a physical machine.

If you're extremely paranoid, you could use VLANs to isolate those machines.