Stand 322, IP09 Earls Court, London - October 7, 2009
- FaceTime Communications warned today that organisations
that do not take full control over the use Web 2.0 applications at
work run the risk of data leakage, fines and a reduction in
productivity, whether they ban their use or not. Businesses caught
in the middle of the "Facebook Face-off" with employees should look
to embrace the new internet, whilst using technology to control
content posted at work to blogs, social networks and from personal
web mail accounts.
"Inhibiting employee use of Web 2.0 applications is a double
edged sword," says Nick Sears, VP EMEA of FaceTime Communications.
"On one hand it's almost impossible for companies to ban their use
with traditional security technologies, on the other preventing
employee use of such widely used tools can curb moral, slow down
decision making and generally impact on day to day
productivity."
For employees prepared to go against company policy, FaceTime
points out that in most cases no technical knowledge is required to
get applications such as streaming audio and video, file sharing
and collaboration tools running on the corporate network. Many of
the thousands of Web 2.0 applications now available do the work for
the user and bypass conventional firewalls and URL filters by
hopping from port to port, using encryption and non-standard
protocols, and tunnelling over HTTP.
With strong evidence now emerging that allowing employee access
to such sites is beneficial, many organisations are starting to
reverse their decisions to ban. However, with no controls in place
to manage sites accessed and content posted, companies are still in
danger from data leaving undetected, employees posting negative and
possibly libellous comments and escalating bandwidth usage.
"Whilst it's much harder to stop employees from doing the wrong
thing out of work, if they are on the company network then most
organisations have a duty to ensure that all electronic
communications is controlled and recorded," continues Nick Sears.
"With the technology available today there is no excuse in allowing
staff to post comments or upload files, without being able to
control the content."
The law is not clear yet over employees making their views clear
on social networking sites outside of work. It does not wish to
infringe on the freedom of speech, but it also recognises an
organisation's need to protect its reputation. The outcome in New
South Wales, Australia, of six prison officers that made a
complaint to the Industrial Relations Commission after being
threatened with the sack over several posts on Facebook, may show
which way the future lies.
Earlier this month FaceTime launched version 3.0 of its Unified
Security Gateway (USG), the first secure web gateway to combine
content monitoring, management and security of Web 2.0
applications, with URL filtering, malware and web anti-virus
protection. USG 3.0 provides granular control of not just Web sites
and internet applications, but also the content posted to blogs,
wikis, webmail and social networking sites such as Twitter,
Facebook and YouTube.
A highly visual reporting engine gives an innovative birds-eye
view of user behaviour across Web, IM, P2P and social networks. New
integration of on-board antivirus scanning technology in
combination with USG's URL filtering and malware engine reduces the
risk of Internet-borne malware and viruses.
"User activity monitoring and reporting is key for us at Pernod
Ricard," comments, Tina Hart, Technical Projects Analyst, Pernod
Ricard, Inc. "The new customisable reporting framework in USG will
be of huge benefit to us and will give us much wider flexibility in
the management of the device and a greater visibility throughout
the organisation of Internet browsing trends."
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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