FaceTime First to Offer Granular Control for MySpace

Market Wire, June, 2008

FaceTime Communications today announced that its Unified Security Gateway (USG) now secures and manages the nearly 2,000 MySpace applications that have been developed by third parties and are currently available for users to download to their MySpace profiles. This granular control of MySpace is complementary to the USG's support for more than 20,000 Facebook widgets , as was announced at the RSA Conference in April 2008. USG also supports granular control of other social networking sites including Bebo, Friendster and LinkedIn.

Three of the top ten most visited Web sites globally are social networking sites, including MySpace at number six, as ranked by Alexa. The increasing use of social networking on company PCs raises numerous concerns for IT managers, from productivity and bandwidth loss to risks of inbound malware to information leakage. The availability of applications and widgets to customize social networking profiles has added a new dimension to IT concerns.

MySpace revealed the first approved applications from third party developers in March 2008. To date, the top 20 most popular MySpace applications have been downloaded by more than 18 million MySpace users, according to the site.

The ability to control Web 2.0 and manage each of these applications individually with FaceTime's USG gives IT the flexibility to allow some or all employees to access their MySpace profiles, and to also control access to some or all of these applications developed by third parties.

Over the past year, FaceTime Security Labs has uncovered myriad scams, phishing schemes, profile hijacks and various other malicious activities on MySpace. For example, FaceTime Director of Malware Research Christopher Boyd uncovered a MySpace hijack scheme last fall, where MySpace Music pages were hacked using a transparent overlay that, when clicked, redirected the visitor to spyware installs and fake security tool installs.

A complete guide to the characteristics and risks of more than 25,000 Web 2.0, social networking and real-time applications and how they behave on the network is available on FaceTime's Greynets Guide Web site at www.greynetsguide.com .

"As a new generation enters the workforce, companies that have traditionally locked down access to Web sites viewed as non-work related are finding they need to rethink their policies," said Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing and product management for FaceTime Communications. "More companies are recognizing that the lines between personal and work life are blurred. Many employees are using consumer-oriented tools to communicate with colleagues, and others are simply convinced it is their right and privilege to access their social networking profiles from their work computers -- but most still don't understand the risk this behavior poses to their employers."

FaceTime's annual survey, Greynets in the Enterprise, tracks trends, attitudes and impact of the use of these consumer-oriented communications tools inside large organizations. The 2007 survey revealed that 85 percent of employees use work PCs for personal purposes. Further, over the past three years of the survey, roughly one-third of end users have consistently reported that they feel they have the right to download applications of their choice on their work computers.

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, 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.

About FaceTime Communications

FaceTime Communications enables the safe and productive use of instant messaging, Web usage and Unified Communications platforms. Ranked number one by IDC for four consecutive years, FaceTime's award-winning solutions are used by more than 900 customers -- including nine of the 10 largest U.S. banks -- for security, management and compliance of real-time communications. FaceTime supports or has strategic partnerships with all leading public and enterprise IM network providers, including AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Skype, IBM, and Jabber.