Allowing federation raises several business and security issues that need to be addressed by applying granular policy rules defining permitted operations between communicating parties.

Applying a policy can also be required from a compliance prospective, preventing conflicts of interest that might result in the inappropriate and dangerous release of sensitive corporate information. Federation itself exposes privacy sensitive information that a company might not wish to share with all external federated users. Such private information includes availability (online/away) and personal details such as mobile phone number and location.

Another example is when a company wishes to conceal from externally federated companies any information on executive team availability via presence information.

To prevent such a situation, organizations need to be able to allow federation with a specific company only for specific internal users or groups.

Additional security measures can be achieved by controlling which modalities are permitted for each conversation, such as IM, audio, video, conference (meeting), desktop sharing and file sharing.