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Press Release

FaceTime Announces Greynet Enterprise Manager, Industry's First Gateway-to-Endpoint Management Platform for Securing Instant Messaging, P2P and Spyware

Patent-pending Technology Enables Automated Remediation and Inoculation of Endpoints

INTEROP, LAS VEGAS (Booth #1081) - May 3, 2006 - FaceTime Communications, the leading provider of solutions for securing and managing greynets such as instant messaging (IM), peer-to-peer (P2P), and spyware, today announced the immediate availability of Greynet Enterprise Manager (GEM). GEM enables organizations to easily set and manage security policies, and obtain aggregated visibility of IM, P2P and spyware traffic across distributed enterprise environments. GEM complements FaceTime's gateway anti-spyware offering, RTGuardian, to offer the only gateway-to-endpoint anti-spyware solution with targeted remediation - a patent pending feature that performs policy-based remediation on endpoints infected with spyware, adware and other greynet applications without deploying client software.

"With responsibility for over 70,000 distributed faculty and students accessing the Internet for instant messaging services, music and file downloads, and new services such as Skype, it is critical that we have sophisticated controls and reporting," said Jim Daniels, computer operations, West Virginia Department of Education. "The FaceTime solution with GEM allows us to offer new Internet applications for classroom and learning purposes, while keeping the users safe and productive."

"Enterprise customers continue to look for anti-spyware solutions that prevent infections in the first place rather than simply react after an infection takes place," said Matt Anderson, Research Director at The Radicati Group. "FaceTime's spyware prevention solution is unique in that it prevents infections at the gateway, but also allows IT administrators to perform targeted remediation on any endpoint PC without involving or interfering with the user."

IM, P2P and spyware applications are part of a category of networked applications that FaceTime calls 'greynets.' Greynets are network-enabled applications that are installed on an end user's system without permission from IT and are highly evasive to existing security infrastructure. While many of these applications deliver collaborative benefits to users, they pose a unique challenge to network administrators by traversing the network through a variety of ports and evasive techniques. If left unmanaged, greynet applications can introduce productivity issues, compliance risks, and concerns over information leakage.

Managing Greynet Threats at the Internet Gateway
RTGuardian is the industry's most advanced perimeter security solution for preventing spyware, enforcing standardization of Enterprise IM vendors such as Microsoft and IBM, securing unauthorized IM, and controlling Skype and P2P usage. GEM consists of two key components:

GEM Management Console - provides an aggregated, centralized view of all reports generated by multiple RTGuardian appliances distributed across the enterprise giving administrators network-wide visibility of all IM, P2P and spyware traffic associated with individual regions, groups and users. The Management Console also enables centralized device management of RTGuardian to provide health, status and firmware version reports to help guarantee network availability and business continuity. Additional features include:
  • Provides detailed reports of actions taken on spyware infections down to the machine and user level, not just IP addresses
  • Discovers and cross-references IM and P2P installations with policies governing their usage to determine enforcement levels
  • Intelligently interprets traffic and activity on the network, providing additional insight into network performance and administration
GEM Endpoint Remediation - Based on detections from RTGuardian appliances, GEM initiates targeted scans and remediation of any managed PC or group of PCs on the network. Network administrators can customize the triggers and scans to best fit their network and policies. Patent-pending, clientless architecture ensures efficient cleaning and inoculation of endpoints to prevent future infections without the need to deploy additional desktop applications or impact end user productivity. Additional features include:
  • Automated threat updates from FaceTime Security Labs' Greynets Research Database provides rapid response and countermeasures to the latest threats
  • Global and custom anti-spyware policies to determine remediation and inoculation across groups of endpoints
  • Utilizes Microsoft-sanctioned technologies to disable endpoint infections
"The unprecedented growth of instant messaging, Skype and P2P usage in the enterprise has been echoed by an unprecedented growth in threats entering the enterprise network via IM and P2P," said Srini Gurrapu, vice president of product management at FaceTime Communications. "Research from FaceTime Security Labs has demonstrated that securing greynets requires working beyond standalone gateway or endpoint solutions, and businesses are demanding a solution that minimizes disruption, compliance risks and information leakage."

Pricing and Availability
GEM 3.0 and related pricing information is available immediately through authorized FaceTime distributors and partners worldwide.

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:

Joshua Barnes
A&R Edelman
650-762-2865
joshua.barnes@ar-edelman.com

 
 
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