FaceTime Secures and Controls 20,000 Facebook Widgets and 400 Web and Real-Time Applications for Safe Use in Enterprise Networks

Business Wire, April 7, 2008

60% of IT Managers Surveyed Are More Concerned about Social Networks than Email

Analysts Advise Enterprises to Avoid Blocking Social Networking

SAN FRANCISCO -- In response to rapidly growing concern over the use of social network sites and Web 2.0 applications in the enterprise, FaceTime today announced significant new capabilities for its Unified Security Gateway (USG) designed to provide IT managers with management, security and control over 140 social networking sites, 20,000 individual Facebook widgets and more than 400 Web and real-time applications. These applications include IPTV, P2P file sharing multimedia, applications and instant messaging clients. The new capabilities complement the USGs URL filtering, anti-malware and IM and P2P management capabilities and will be available in 30 days.

Today's internet is dominated by instant messaging, P2P, VoIP, social networking, blogs, and myriad Web 2.0 applications. Five of the top 10 most visited sites on the Web are social networking sites, as reported by Alexa Traffic Rankings. Some of these social networking sites, such as Facebook, have opened up their platforms for third party developers to add applications. Industry efforts such as the OpenSocial initiative will result in more third party development for its members, including MySpace. The availability of customized social networking pages and increasing use of real time applications such as instant messaging, combined with more complex malware, has made URL filtering alone insufficient for securing the Web gateway.

In the March 10, 2008 Gartner, Inc. Report "Social-Networking Sites Present Real Business Risks and Benefits," Peter Firstbrook says. "There are corporate advantages to allowing social-networking sites, the most compelling of which are attracting employees and providing a progressive work environment." Firstbrook recommends that "organizations should only block social-networking sites after conducting a careful analysis of the risks and benefits."

According to research conducted by FaceTime over the past two weeks, 60 percent of IT managers are more concerned about the use of social networking in the enterprise than are concerned with email use. Nearly one-third of those surveyed are in organizations that have policies against employee access of social networking sites at work, and 20 percent said they are concerned about social networking but their organizations have not yet established a policy.

Although IT managers are appropriately concerned about the security of their networks, it's clear that Web 2.0 applications and social networking sites are in use in the enterprise, and here to stay.

"As the line between work and personal life blurs, Web gateway security becomes more complicated. Employees are no longer just shopping online - they are accessing Facebook, MySpace and other Web 2.0 applications from their work PCs to collaborate and interact with friends and co-workers," said Kailash Ambwani, president and CEO of FaceTime Communications." This phenomenon is generating concern among our customers over everything from productivity to bandwidth loss, from malware to information leakage."

FaceTime has published detailed information on social networking and Web 2.0 applications on its www.GreynetsGuide.com public resource database. In addition to the Facebook applications, the site references more than 800 greynets in categories including gaming software, IPTV, Instant Messaging, P2P, multimedia, VoIP, social networking, Web Conferencing, Web-based email and remote administration tools. This information is used to help IT managers determine which applications to block, which to enable and which to monitor using FaceTime's USG secure Web gateway appliance.

FaceTime's GreynetsGuide database is a valuable resource for determining the characteristics of various social networking and Web 2.0 applications and third party widgets, and its integration with the Unified Security Gateway provides a complete secure Web gateway offering - allowing customers to easily obtain detailed information about an application detected in their network by USG.

About the Unified Security Gateway for Today's Real-time Internet

The FaceTime Unified Security Gateway (USG) is a secure Web gateway appliance that enables enterprises to control the new Internet, including Web and real-time communications. USG integrates management, security and compliance of Web communications, social networking, consumer-driven greynet applications such as public IM, Skype and P2P and enterprise-class Unified Communications suites such as Microsoft's Office Communications Server and IBM Lotus Sametime. From a single platform, organizations can enable and enforce safe and productive use of these applications and protect the network against inbound malware, mitigate information leakage risks and insure that corporate, regulatory and e-discovery needs are met.

The USG integrates gateway malware protection and Web filtering with FaceTime's best-in-class IM hygiene and archiving, in a purpose-built, hardened appliance. With this single point of control, organizations can gain complete visibility of all Internet communications and reduce total cost of ownership using a simpler solution that is easily administered by the IT staff. Key capabilities of USG include: