FOSTER CITY, Calif.-June 16, 2003 -- Building upon over four
years of experience delivering enterprise infrastructure and
business solutions that extend the power of instant messaging (IM)
and other forms of real-time communications in the enterprise,
FaceTime Communications today announced IM Guardian, an enterprise
security gateway designed and optimized for managing complex,
real-time communication technologies such as IM and peer-to-peer
(P2P) communications, Web teleconferencing, and voice over IP
(VoIP). IM Guardian gives network security administrators the
ability to safely embrace legitimate business usage of IM and P2P
by addressing the application vulnerability, network security and
bandwidth issues associated with their use while blocking
illegitimate, non-business usage altogether.
According to a recent study by Gartner, "70% of enterprises were
flooded with instant messages, creating a communications
environment where mass adoption reigned in the face of IT
resistance." Similarly, the popularity of P2P file-sharing is
growing at an exponential rate. KaZaA, one of the most widely used
P2P applications, recently announced that over 200 million users
have downloaded its P2P product. The rapid proliferation of these
and other real-time applications creates IT challenges in
distinguishing legitimate business use from non-business use.
"IM and P2P client applications today are capable of exhibiting
harmful behavior whereby random ports on the firewall are opened
allowing unauthorized network traffic to pass through," said Matt
Cain, vice president at META Group. "In addition to draining
bandwidth, this exposes the network to potential attacks, such as
the recent "fizzer" worm which affected KaZaA P2P. Companies need
to aggressively deploy management and security tools that enable
organizations to maximize the business benefits of IM and P2P,
while mitigating risks associated with security and employee
misuse."
IM Guardian extends the core real-time management and control
capabilities of the FaceTime IM Director solution (see today's
related FaceTime announcement). Designed to be deployed in the
corporate DMZ, IM Guardian acts a security gateway for real-time
communications, providing blocking or management and control
protection from application vulnerabilities, policies for
application behavior, dynamic port negotiation, network usage
statistics, and anti-virus scanning for file transfers. IM Guardian
detects and enforces application behavior based on patterns in the
OSI model's application layer to protect against unauthorized use,
and is designed to seamlessly deploy within existing network
security infrastructure. IM Guardian complements existing
enterprise network security products and firewalls.
"As more companies realize the benefits of IM and P2P, it is
important for network administrators to know and have control over
how the applications themselves behave over the network," said
Rahul Abhyankar, senior product manager at FaceTime Communications.
"If left unmanaged altogether, these applications can be used as
Trojan horses to attack the network at a later time. IM Guardian is
designed to provide enterprises with IM and P2P security at
multiple levels, and works hand-in-hand with FaceTime's enterprise
IM management suite of security, management and control
solutions."
IM Guardian offers key functionality in three areas: 1) detection,
2) protection, 3) extension and integration:
Detection:
#
# Detect network behavior of all popular public IM networks
and P2P applications
# Detailed usage reports on IM and P2P network
activity, including network bandwidth and
application behavior reports
Seamless deployment within existing network infrastructure
Protection:
#
# Block illegitimate IM and P2P application behavior
# Control legitimate use of IM and P2P application behavior
# Prevent unauthorized connections
# Ensure authorized ports are used for firewall and
proxy traversal to prevent port
crawling
# Protect from messages that exploit protocol
vulnerabilities
Anti-virus scanning for file transfers supporting McAfee
and other popular virus scanning
solutions
Extension and Integration:
#
# Integration for authorized interaction with popular
firewalls
# Integration with FaceTime's suite of enterprise IM
management and control solutions installed
behind the corporate firewall
Extendable to other forms of real-time communications in
the future
Key Benefits:
#
# Enterprise-grade architecture with support for Red Hat
Linux
# Embrace the legitimate use of productive-enhancing
real-time applications such as IM
# Block the unauthorized use of non-productive and
bandwidth intensive real-time applications
such as P2P
Seamless integration with FaceTime's enterprise
IM management suite of security, management
and control solutions
IM Guardian will be generally available in Q3 2003. For additional
sales information, FaceTime can be reached at
http://www.facetime.com/imwithus.htm, (888) 349-FACE, or via IM
screen name FaceTimeLive.
FaceTime provides its customers with a comprehensive approach to
the centralized security, management and control of real-time
communications in the enterprise. The company's enterprise IM
management suite of solutions enables IT organizations to apply
standard business use policies to all diverse methods of real-time
communications on any public, private or enterprise network.
About Actiance, Inc. (Formerly FaceTime Communications, Inc.)
FaceTime Communications became Actiance, Inc on January 11, 2011 following an agreement to
transfer the FaceTime trademark to Apple.
FaceTime Communications enables the safe and productive use of Unified Communications and Web 2.0,
including instant messaging, blogs and social networking. Ranked number one by IDC for five consecutive
years, FaceTime's award-winning solutions are used by more than 1,500 customers for the security,
management and compliance of real-time communications. FaceTime supports or has strategic partnerships
with all leading IM, unified communications providers and social networks including AOL, Google, Yahoo!,
Skype, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
FaceTime is headquartered in Belmont, California. For more information visit
http://www.facetime.com or call 888-349-3223.
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