FOSTER CITY, CALIF - August 2, 2005 - FaceTime
Communications and NewDiligence, a market research company, today
released data that show enterprises spending on average $130,000
per month in IT time fighting spyware related issues. The data were
collected in a survey of more than 1000 end users and IT managers
to determine the impact that the growth of unsanctioned
applications have on enterprises. The survey specifically
highlights the fact that reports of spyware are occurring at twice
the rate of virus infections. In addition to the IT costs
associated with remedying infected machines, these incidents have
led to thousands of dollars in productivity loss. Further
exacerbating the issue, the survey also shows a growing end user
adoption rate of unsanctioned network applications on enterprise
PCs. FaceTime considers spyware part of a larger, fast-growing set
of unsanctioned applications called "Greynets." Greynet
applications are downloaded and installed on end user systems,
without express permission from, or awareness by IT (and often
without even the end user's awareness - as with spyware) and then
use evasive techniques to traverse the network. Greynet
applications include instant messaging, P2P file sharing, web
conferencing, SKYPE, web mail and adware/spyware. The Greynet
Research Study found the following:
- In general, end users believe they have the right to install
Greynet applications at the workplace. They also believe IT has any
security issues associated with Greynets under control. 87% of the
same end users reported a spyware or virus problem resulting in
slow Internet response times, pop up ads and corrupted files.
- Among IT managers who have rolled out perimeter security
solutions, consisting of gateway AV, URL filtering and IDS/IDP, 77%
have had a spyware incident in the past 6 months, and 3 out of 4 IT
managers stated that spyware incidents were occurring at the same
or greater frequency compared to 6 months ago.
- Within the next 6 months virtually all end users will have
deployed some type of Greynet application and 8 out of 10 end users
(78%) now use one or more Greynet applications; Based on stated
intentions this number will rise to 93% in the next 6 months.
- 91% off all IT managers surveyed have a desktop anti-spyware
product installed yet they are not overly confident in its ability
to stop spyware.
- 3 in 10 IT managers who experienced a virus incident, report
that IM has been associated with such occurrences. A similar
proportion report that IM has been associated with spyware.
"In today's enterprise, we are seeing significant adoption of
both 'good' and 'bad' Greynet applications on employee PCs," said
Kailash Ambwani, President and CEO of FaceTime Communications.
"Through our IMPact Center, we are observing a steady increase of
worms, viruses and growing threats, such as spyware, within the
enterprise, and are discovering from customers and through this
research that current network and desktop security technologies are
not effectively solving the spyware problem. The Greynet
Research Study, conducted over the last three months, was
designed and fielded to 622 IT managers and 564 end users across
small, medium and large businesses. This study was conducted to
learn the corporate use of Greynets and the impact of spyware and
virus incidents within an organization.
About Actiance
Actiance helps organizations manage, secure and ensure compliance
across unified communications, collaboration and Web 2.0
applications such as blogs, wikis and social networks. Actiance's
award-winning platforms are used by 9 of the top 10 US banks and
284 FINRA regulated firms globally.
The Actiance platform allows organizations to gain visibility of
applications in use, apply usage and content policies, ensure
compliance and gain valuable insights across the communications and
collaboration channels. Actiance supports all leading social
networks, unified communications and collaboration providers and IM
platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, Yahoo!,
AOL, Skype, Cisco, Microsoft, Jive, and IBM.
Actiance is headquartered in Belmont, California. For more
information visit or call 888-349-3223.
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