White Papers for Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)

Securing Unified Communications: From Consumer-Based IM to Enterprise Collaboration and Beyond

FaceTime Communications

Internet communications have changed. The user-initiated traffic of real-time communications has created a complex environment dominated by highly evasive greynets such as IM, Skype, P2P and web conferencing. Employees introduce these consumer-grade applications into the corporate environment and they circumvent existing security infrastructure, making it difficult for IT administrators to gain visibility and control.

In response, many large organizations are deploying unified communications platforms such as Microsoft Office Communications Server and IBM Lotus Sametime. However, use of consumer-grade applications continues. FaceTime research has found that three out of four employees in organizations where an enterprise IM platform has been deployed continue to use public IM systems such as AOL, Yahoo, and MSN.

Real-time Internet applications pose myriad network and information security risks because they provide vectors for malware, client-side code vulnerabilities, intellectual property loss, and identity theft. Even when an enterprise UC platform is deployed, security and compliance must still be managed from a central point of control, along with enforcement of policies to safely manage the inevitable intermingling of consumer and enterprise-grade applications through federation.

Learn how FaceTime can help you address these fundamental changes in web and real-time communications security with their Unified Security Gateway - the first network appliance to leverage presence technology to enable security, management and compliance on a single platform for web and real-time communications traffic in the enterprise.

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