BELMONT, CALIF. - October 16, 2007 - FaceTime
Communications, the leading provider of solutions that control
greynets and manage unified communications in the enterprise, today
announced the results of its annual survey, "Greynets in the
Enterprise: 3rd Annual Survey of Trends, Attitudes and Impact."
In September 2007, data was collected in a survey of more than
700 employees and IT managers to determine the impact greynet
applications have on companies and organizations. Greynets -
real-time consumer applications (e.g instant messaging, P2P, VoIP)
that are often introduced by individual 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.
According to the study, greynet use has increased dramatically
within the workplace. An average of nine greynets are in use within
the typical organization, and 99 percent of IT managers report at
least one greynet in use at their locations. In spite of deploying
security infrastructure such as firewalls and IPS products, nine in
10 IT managers have experienced a greynet-related security incident
in the last six months. In fact, only about 3 percent have avoided
greynet-related security incidents during this period.
While some greynets such as Skype, instant messaging (IM) and
Web conferencing have legitimate business uses, IT requires
visibility and control to ensure their safe and productive use.
With other greynets, such as P2P file sharing, video streaming and
anonymizers, the risks might outweigh the benefits and
organizations need the ability to accurately detect and block them.
Greynets can be evasive on the network, often circumventing the
traditional security infrastructure that was designed for e-mail
and standard Web traffic.
The survey shows that the average cost companies incur in
recovering from greynet-related incidents on company PCs has more
than doubled over last year. IT managers reported spending an
average of nearly $289,000 annually to repair or re-image company
PCs after malware attacks over greynets. The cost reported in last
year's study was nearly $130,000 per year. On average, IT managers
experience nearly 39 incidents per month that require some kind of
repair or remediation to end-user PCs and each repair requires, on
average, about nine hours of work.
Employees don't always see eye-to-eye with IT management
regarding risky behavior on the network. For example, 80 percent of
IT managers deem anonymizers - applications that disguise network
traffic to permit anonymous use of the Internet - risky to
corporate networks. In contrast, just more than half of users (57
percent) find them risky, for a 19 percent differential in risk
assessment.
The bottom line is that greynet usage makes IT nervous: 40
percent of IT managers report that public IM use at work poses
"serious risk," while another 46 percent indicate that IM poses
"some risk," for a total of 86 percent of managers who are wary of
the public IM networks and their impact on the work
environment.
Employee Attitudes Regarding Greynet Use
In FaceTime's previous two annual surveys, employees candidly
proclaimed their belief that they have the right to download the
applications they need onto their work PCs, regardless of whether
or not those applications are sanctioned by IT. This trend
continues, with 36 percent of employees proclaiming this right in
this year's survey. In addition, 40 percent of employees said that
they need more applications than are typically installed on their
work PCs. This trend underscores the need for IT management to work
more closely with employees both to understand changing workplace
needs, as well as to educate the workforce on security and
compliance issues facing the organization.
In addition, this year's survey reveals:
- Eighty-five percent of employees report that they use their
work PCs for "personal, non-work purposes," and among these
employees, 38 percent send personal IMs or engage in chat while at
work.
- The personal use of work computers is independent of company
size. Across the board, approximately eight in 10 will surf, shop
and chat over the company network, testimony to the continued
blurring of personal and professional workspaces.
- Fewer than half - 45 percent - of employees are at work
locations where personal IM messaging is monitored by the
organization.
- The number of work locations with eight or more greynet
applications in use has almost tripled in the last three
years.
Greynet Concerns in Unified Communications
Deployments
Concerns about the impact of greynets also extend to organizations
that have or are actively planning the roll-out of unified
communications (UC) applications - 44 percent of those surveyed.
Larger companies, measured by employee size, are twice as likely to
roll out UC compared to small companies. And, not surprisingly,
security is the top concern for IT managers who are rolling out UC.
Eighty-six percent of IT managers ranked security as their top
concern, while only 65 percent indicated that return on investment
(ROI) is a top concern.
The survey revealed that 45 percent of IT managers are at work
locations where enterprise IM or unified communications are
deployed. However, even at these locations, 74 percent report that
public IM networks are also used by employees.
"Deploying enterprise IM or a unified communications platform
can lead an organization to believe that it has given employees all
the capabilities they need to collaborate effectively," said Frank
Cabri, vice president of marketing and product management for
FaceTime. "However, the reality is that employees will continue to
download new greynets at their own pace and will continue to use
the consumer-oriented applications they are familiar with, both for
work- and non-work-related communications."
Growing Compliance Concerns
In addition to security concerns, regulatory and corporate
governance requirements have prompted an unprecedented emphasis on
compliance for IM and other real-time communications in use within
enterprises.
- Sixty-eight percent of IT managers are at work locations where
there are specific guidelines and polices that govern the archiving
and storage of IM, e-mail and chat communications.
- Fifty-three percent of IT managers have received guidance from
their corporate counsel concerning the archiving and storage of
e-mails, IMs, chats and other employee communications.
- Forty-five percent of organizations would be unable to produce
an archive or record of a specific employee's IM communications, if
required to do so for legal purposes.
- Thirty-two percent of the companies that have deployed
enterprise IM also report they are incapable of producing logs of
employee IM communications.
The full report, "Greynets in the Enterprise: 3rd Annual Survey
of Trends, Attitudes and Impacts," is available from FaceTime at www.facetime.com/greynetsurvey2007.
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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