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Technology industry analyst firm Info-Tech Research Group of London, Ont., is telling enterprises to ban Skype — the freely available Voice over Internet Protocol phone service — from their organizations.

Companies that are already banning peer-to-peer applications, such as instant messaging, should add Skype to its list of unsanctioned software programs, the company says.

Info-Tech Research Group says that Skype is not standards-compliant, allowing it and any vulnerability to pass through corporate firewalls; its encryption is closed source and prone to man-in-the-middle attacks; enterprises using it risk a communication barrier with countries and institutions that have already banned the service; it is undetectable, untraceable and unauditable, and the question of whether VoIP calls constitute a business record is a legal quagmire.