|
|
|
Press Release
Open University Selects FaceTime to Secure Instant Messaging For UK's Largest Distance Learning University
London, UK - Monday, March 6th, 2006 - The Open University has selected FaceTime Communications, the leading provider of solutions for securing IM, P2P and spyware Greynets, to prevent worms and viruses from using instant messaging (IM) to invade and exploit its UK student network. The Open University is the world's first successful distance learning university with more than 180,000 students that interact online from home around the world.
FaceTime's IMAuditor was chosen to fully integrate with the Open University's existing diverse infrastructure and to meet all the management requirements desired by the Open University staff, including flexible reporting, management and scalability. The solution provides the Open University with the ability to tailor the settings to respect users' privacy which is very important to the Open University educational community. IMAuditor also offers low maintenance and ease of integration with existing infrastructure, which helps keep the costs down.
FaceTime's IMAuditor will be used to provide protection from viruses, worms and IM Spam (SPIM). A log of the date and time of public IM conversations will help the University to investigate, should allegations of abuse or harassment arise involving IM, and significantly mitigate against the potential for loss of reputation or legal liability.
Chris Wigglesworth, senior systems programmer, network development team, the Open University comments:
"While the Open University does not yet use IM in its core business or actively promote its use, we recognised that staff were increasingly using IM effectively in their daily interactions. Realising that the nature of instant messaging means worms can propagate extremely quickly and that a firewall cannot be relied upon to protect against threats spreading via IM, having a product such as IMAuditor in place gives us considerable peace of mind."
The Open University will also benefit from FaceTime's Day Zero Defense System. An integral component of IMAuditor, the Day Zero Defense System utilises attributes such as message frequency, content matching, URL identification and other heuristics to detect malicious behaviour and stop infections in real-time - rather than the conventional approach which requires organisations to wait hours or even days for a signature to be created, tested and distributed.
The system employs a patent pending challenge/response mechanism that allows administrators to quarantine suspicious IM conversations and initiate a challenge to the sender which requires a human to successfully respond to the challenge. This stops malicious threats created by computer bots and allows uninterrupted delivery of legitimate communications sent by human sources.
Wigglesworth continues:
"FaceTime's IMAuditor does what we need an IM security solution to do. It scans file transfers for viruses using our existing anti-virus, it can be deployed on Linux and it logs the IP addresses of clients. The unique challenge-response mechanism prevents IM worms and SPIM without relying solely on signatures."
Nick Sears, managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, FaceTime Communications, comments:
"It's encouraging to see an organisation such as the Open University tackling the IM risk head-on whilst fully embracing the benefits it can provide. More awareness is needed of what constitutes 'best practice' when it comes to IM use within an organisation and the OU is setting a good example. It's great to be able to help the Open University deploy a solution that enables them to realise their strategy of safe and secure use of all instant messaging throughout their organisation."
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.
About Open University (OU)
The Open University (OU) was the world's first university to offer successful fully supported distance teaching. Started in 1969, the OU was founded on the belief that communications technology could bring high quality degree-level learning to people who had not had the opportunity to attend campus universities. Today, more than 180,000 students interact with the OU online from home around the world; they are supported by more 4500 academic and administrative staff at the main site in Milton Keynes, 13 UK regional centres and European offices in Dublin and Brussels.
The OU has a complex IT environment encompassing Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Unix desktops, workstations and servers. There is a firewall cluster, extensive VPN infrastructure, and anti-virus is in place at mail gateways and on the desktops.
PR Contact:
Emily Chamberlin
650-762-2945
echamberlin@ar-edelman.com
|
|
|