FOSTER CITY, CALIF. - November 8, 2006 -
FaceTime Communications, the leading provider of solutions for
securing and managing greynets such as IM, P2P, Skype and Web
conferencing, and market research firm NewDiligence, today reported
results of their annual survey: Employee Use of Greynets: 2nd
Annual Survey of Trends, Attitudes and Impact. The study confirms
that employees are continuing to download and use unsanctioned
applications to gain new business productivity advantages, while IT
managers confirmed greynets continue to be dangerous if left
unmanaged and can introduce significant risks to the business. To
obtain a copy of the Employee Use of Greynets: 2nd Annual Survey of
Trends, Attitudes and Impact, please visit www.facetime.com/greynetresearch
In October 2006, data was collected in a survey of more than
1,100 employees (end users) and IT managers to determine the impact
that greynet applications have on enterprises, small and medium
sized businesses. Greynets - real-time communications applications
that are often introduced by end users and use highly evasive
techniques to traverse the network - pose myriad network and
information security risks because they provide vectors for
malware, intellectual property loss, identity theft and compliance
risks.
While some greynets such as Web conferencing, Web browsing, IM
and Skype™ have legitimate business uses, IT needs visibility and
control to ensure their safe and productive use. Still others such
as P2P file sharing, video streaming, and anonymizers can pose
further consequences to the organization. All these new, real-time
collaborative applications can be evasive on the network, often
circumventing traditional security infrastructure that was designed
for email and standard Web traffic.
Results of the survey show that more users are adopting greynet
applications while, at the same time, little progress has been made
toward combating greynet-related attacks. Eighty one percent of IT
managers reported greynet-related attacks within the last six
months, about the same rate as one year ago. The most common
attacks continue to be from spyware and adware (75 percent),
viruses and worms (57 percent), other malware (22 percent) and
rootkits and keyloggers (22 percent). Further, the required repair
and remediation as a result of these attacks is costly. A typical
organization is estimated to spend nearly $130,000 per year on
average to repair damage from greynet-related attacks, while the
largest companies are estimated to spend upwards of $350,000 per
year repairing damage from greynet-related attacks due to higher
incident rates.
Additional key findings include:
- Four in ten employees believe they have the right to install
greynet applications on their work computer, and more than half the
end users are at work locations where policies governing IM and P2P
usage are disregarded (53 percent)
- The number of work locations where eight or more greynet
applications are in use has doubled over the past 12 months,
growing from 20 percent of locations one year ago to 41 percent
today
- Seventy percent of end users have sent personal IMs from work,
and 1 in 4 employees admitted to sending information about company
plans, finances or password/login credentials via IM
- More than one-fourth of employees say they use IM in order to
have "private, unmonitored communications," and if end users knew
their IM communications were monitored, almost half (45 percent)
would pay more attention to company guidelines while one fifth
would pick their words more carefully (21 percent)
- One in five IT managers report the unauthorized distribution of
personal information (22 percent) or intellectual property (19
percent) via greynets
- Three-fourths of IT managers report productivity reductions
from non-work related activities (73 percent) including downloading
of adult materials (50 percent), copyright violations (39 percent)
and violations of corporate communications policies (33
percent)
- Only 11 percent of IT managers believe their network systems
would have intercepted the type of sexually explicit IMs allegedly
sent by former Congressman Mark Foley
- On a positive note, two-thirds of IT managers recognize that
"IM and P2P have benefits" but must nonetheless be managed by
IT
"End users continue to take business communications into their
own hands, downloading and using real-time collaborative
applications often without a complete understanding of the risks,"
said Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing for FaceTime
Communications. "The challenge for IT leaders is finding the right
balance between enabling employee use of these applications while
minimizing the risks to their organization. This challenge is
compounded by the fact that much of the perimeter network security
previously deployed was not designed to secure the greynet
applications that employees find desirable."
Employees consider it a right to download unsanctioned
applications
Consistent with last year's results, end users surveyed believe it
is within their right to download the applications they deem
necessary to do their jobs. Half of the users surveyed had
downloaded some type of greynet application in the past six months,
and the top three greynet applications preferred by employees
include streaming media, Web mail, and public instant messaging. In
addition, about 40 percent of employees admit to downloading
applications even when explicitly forbidden or unsanctioned by
their IT department.
Current security infrastructure is
ineffective
IT Manager survey respondents were asked to assess their own
company networks in terms of their capacity to intercept the kinds
of IMs allegedly sent by former Congressman Mark Foley. Only 11
percent of IT managers indicated that their networks would have
been "very effective" at intercepting such communications. In fact,
31 percent of IT managers rate their networks as "not at all
effective" at preventing these kind of messages from being
delivered.
This data indicates that the current security infrastructure,
designed to guard networks against threats coming through email or
the traditional Web channel, is not equipped to guard against
today's greynet-related threats. Although nearly all IT managers
have deployed network-based security measures, dedicated hardware
or software that directly addresses greynet-related threats tends
to be less frequently installed. For example, 96 percent of IT
managers report having firewalls and 82 percent reported having
gateway anti-virus installed while only 35 percent are currently
using IM and greynet management tools.
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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