Discussions on Skype security and its readiness for business use come up fairly regularly each year on the mailing lists and blogspace. More fuel may be added to the fire if an Arstechnica article is accurate in describing China monitoring Skype user text chats, either through their own breaking/stealing of the encryption keys or through collusion with Skype (ebay) itself.

I’ve posted about Skype security in the past here, here, and here. I’ve also ruminated on last year’s Skype “outage” which I still believe to be a result of a security flaw in their servers.

What it comes down to is whether Skype (ebay) wants to be in the corporate space or not. If they do, they absolutely need to provide visibility into the communications, unless they just want to be in the SMB and smaller world. If they want their foot in both consumerland and the corporate space, they’re doing a poor job of being transparent with their technology.

Me? I personally believe government and any large business Skype wants to get in bed with will be provided means to essentially wiretap users at will as needed. Call me paranoid. 🙂

Disclosure: I have nothing otherwise against Skype for home/consumer use whatsoever! I think it’s awesome! I just don’t think that means it needs a place in my corporate network (just like Macs for average users!).