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Press Release
FaceTime Offers Only Solution to Deliver True Compliance for Recent FDIC Edict
Leading Bank Consortium's Proclamation Signifies Growing Importance of Secure Instant Messaging in Financial Services
FOSTER CITY, Calif. - August 3, 2004 - FaceTime Communications, the leading provider of solutions that secure, manage, and extend instant messaging (IM) and other forms of real-time communications, today responded to the recent guidance by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on the use and handling of IM communications. FaceTime's comprehensive suite of solutions exceeds the standards suggested by the organization. The FDIC's statement, which was released July 21 http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/financial/2004/fil8404.html,
http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/financial/2004/fil8404a.html, called for its 5,300 member banks and financial institutions to take measures guarding against security risks, privacy and identity hijacking and legal liability. Specifically, the memo called for firewalls to block incoming and outgoing public IM traffic and strongly urged members to adopt intrusion detection system (IDS) software while, at the same time, highlighting some of the port crawling and tunneling capabilities of IM clients that make them particularly difficult to secure.
Further expanding on its long and well-established relationship with FaceTime, America Online, Inc. extended its AOL® Instant Messenger™ (AIM®) Certified Application Partner Agreement to include RTMatrix, a free IM and presence platform and tool kit that will be made available to developers that leverage the security, management and compliance benefits of FaceTime IM Director™ or
IMAuditor™.
FaceTime's "defense-in-depth" solution not only meets the requirements spelled out by the FDIC, but it also provides the only guaranteed solution to block IM and P2P representing a stronger measure than the firewall and IDS recommendations laid out by the organization which can easily be circumvented. FaceTime's solution includes the RTG500 perimeter security appliance that delivers complete, non-stop protection from unauthorized IM connections, while also eliminating peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing, plus
IMAuditor 5.0 for logging, auditing and user behavior control within the network. The "defense-in-depth" approach is the only solution of its kind in the industry and provides a way to safely enable IM use in an organization within the constraints of the FDIC's guidance.
"The Firewall and IDS language in the FDIC guidance assumes companies are blocking IM," said Henry Wolfgang Carter, CEO of H.W. Carter Consulting, LLC a consultancy firm specializing in electronic communications and associate regulatory issues. "Unfortunately, a firewall and IDS software implementation by themselves do not protect from unauthorized IM and file sharing. FaceTime's comprehensive solution supercedes any firewall and IDS configuration and provides banks the option of safely using IM while addressing the FDIC's security concerns."
Michael J. Zamorski Director, Division of Supervision and Consumer Protection at the FDIC, issued the edict and raised the bar for IM security and compliance significantly. Where past guidances from other financial services organizations focused on the archiving and logging of communications for proper regulatory compliance, the FDIC expanded the discussion of information security to include threats posed by viruses, worms and Trojans from outside the company's walls, as well as the protection of information that could potentially be leaked from within. Over 80 percent of financial services firms have employee usage of IM at work, while only 30 percent formally sanction its use. With the FDIC putting IM to the top of the industry's agenda, the industry is bound to have a greater sensitivity and awareness of the risks associated with its use.
"We are pleased that the FDIC has raised the bar for IM security and compliance standards," said Kailash Ambwani, President and CEO of FaceTime Communications. "FaceTime has been meeting this standard for more than half of the largest 100 financial services firms worldwide over the past few years, and we will continue to stay ahead of the industry's curve when it comes to IM protection. We hope that this direct and detailed guidance provided by the FDIC with regards to IM will now be replicated by the Security and Exchange Commission, other governmental regulatory agencies and the self-regulating bodies which oversee financial services companies worldwide. Most of these organizations have been noticeably absent to date regarding the requirements to log, audit and archive IM, as well as the security risks posed by their uncontrolled use."
The complete text of the FDIC guidance along with information on FaceTime's defense-in-depth solutions and how they address the recommendations can be found at www.facetime.com/fdic
About FaceTime Communications
FaceTime Communications enables the safe and productive use of instant
messaging, Web usage and Unified Communications platforms. Ranked number one by
IDC for four consecutive years, FaceTime's award-winning solutions are used by
more than 900 customers – including nine of the 10 largest U.S. banks – for
security, management and compliance of real-time communications. FaceTime
supports or has strategic partnerships with all leading public and enterprise
IM network providers, including AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Skype, IBM and Jabber.
FaceTime is headquartered in Belmont, California. For more information visit
http://www.facetime.com or call 888-349-FACE.
The FaceForward blog, at http://blog.facetime.com,
offers thoughts and opinions about the changing nature of Internet communications.
PR Contact:
Emily Chamberlin
650-762-2945
echamberlin@ar-edelman.com
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