BELMONT, CALIF. - March 20, 2008 - FaceTime
Communications, the leading provider of solutions that control
Internet and unified communications (UC) in the enterprise, today
announced enhancements to its Greynet
Enterprise Manager (GEM) including detection of malicious URLs
entering the enterprise network via Skype
instant messaging conversations.
Skype is encrypted using a proprietary method, making it
impossible for traditional security products to view the content of
a Skype
text conversation. Working in partnership with Skype over the
last year, FaceTime is the only security vendor with the ability to
examine the content of a Skype instant message as it enters the
network. Using its leading malware signature database maintained by
FaceTime Security Labs, FaceTime's products verify that content is
safe and free of malicious URL links before entering the
network.
With 276 million registered business users worldwide, Skype's
growing popularity and inherent cost savings have made it very
attractive to businesses looking to provide the advantages of
presence and real-time Internet communications to their employees.
Being able to protect against the threat of malware that can enter
the network via something as simple as a URL in a chat screen is
crucial to IT's realization of the real-time presence benefits of
Skype.
An add-on to FaceTime's popular
Unified Security Gateway and IMAuditor
products, GEM enables organizations to manage security policies
and aggregate reporting for IM, P2P and malware traffic across
distributed enterprise environments. By integrating with USG, GEM
delivers the industry's most robust network-based anti-malware
solution, allowing targeted remediation and repair of infected
endpoints dynamically based on gateway malware detections from
USG.
"Simple block or allow policies are no longer sufficient in most
organizations," said Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing and
product management for FaceTime. "IT managers are realizing they
need to embrace the real-time
communications that employees have introduced to the business
environment with policies and tools to secure, control, manage, log
and archive their use - as well as their content."
Malware entering enterprise networks via real-time
communications such as instant messaging and Skype costs businesses
nearly $289,000 annually on average, according to the 2007 survey
"Greynets
in the Enterprise: Third Annual Survey of Trends, Attitudes and
Impact," conducted by NewDiligence Research and commissioned by
FaceTime. The survey revealed that IT managers experience nearly 39
incidents per month, on average, that require some kind of repair
or remediation to end user PCs, and each repair requires, on
average, about nine hours of work.
FaceTime and Skype
In addition to GEM-based control of in-bound URLs, FaceTime offers
IT-oriented controls to manage
Skype in an enterprise environment through its Unified Security
Gateway appliance. Centralized policies can easily be set to allow
or disallow various Skype elements for the entire company, for
groups or departments, or on an individual basis - including file
transfer, voice calling, video calling, voicemail and voice
recording.
In addition, proxy settings and listen port settings can be
turned on or off for users and administrators to prevent users from
broadcasting their presence online. IT can set parameters to deny
users from becoming supernodes or relay nodes, and a real-time
bandwidth usage indicator provides a constant measure for IT to
determine Skype's impact on network traffic.
GEM 3.5 is available now. Enhancements include:
- Detection and blocking of malicious URLs entering network via
Skype IM/chat conversations insures network integrity
- PC discovery via Active Directory lookup provides ease of
configuration and lower administrative costs
- Users can trigger remediation from their browsers on
notification of inbound malware, lowering exposure to risk,
reducing help desk calls, and eliminating the cost of re-imaging
PCs due to infection
- Centralized policies may be set with localized enforcement
based on IP ranges and geographic location, lowering administrative
management time and costs
- URL filtering reports may be imported from USG into GEM,
providing a centralized view for all channels across multiple
USGs
- Support for Vista desktop prevents exposure to threats and
lowers risk for all endpoints on the network
- Support for VMware as a deployment platform provides enhanced
options for architecture scalability and redundancy
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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