Patent ID: 7756981

Claim:
A system configured to enforce message protocol policy, the system comprising: a virtual private network agent residing within a remote client; a user agent residing within the remote client, the user agent comprising, a communications monitoring element executing on a computing device and configured to examine a communications connection between the remote client and an external message server to determine if an attribute of the external message server matches a restricted server attribute, wherein both the remote client and the external message server reside outside an enterprise network comprising a virtual private network gateway and a protocol inspection gateway; and a communications controller element configured to work in conjunction with the communications monitoring element to, block instant message communications between the remote client and the external message server when the attribute of the external message server matches the restricted server attribute unless the instant message communications between the remote client and the external message server and route the blocked instant message communications via the virtual private network agent to the enterprise network, and allow direct communication between the remote client and the external message server by bypassing the virtual private network agent when the attribute of the external message server does not match the restricted server attribute; wherein the virtual private network gateway is configured to communicate with the virtual private network agent to receive the instant message communications routed thereto, wherein the virtual private network gateway is further configured to receive the routed instant message communications from the virtual private network agent via tunneling, and wherein the protocol inspection gateway is configured to, receive the instant message communications from the virtual private network gateway routed to the enterprise network, inspect a message protocol associated with the routed instant message communications to determine if the message protocol matches a protocol definition file, and when a match occurs, apply applying a policy enforcement rule associated with the protocol definition file that overrides aspects of the message protocol associated with the routed instant message communications.