Press Release
Cost of Security Incidents Due to IM and Greynet Use More than Doubles in One
Year
Third Annual Survey Reveals the Financial Impact of Greynets is Growing, Costing
Companies More Than $289,000 per Year on Average
Employees Continue to Believe They Have the Right to Download Applications of
Their Choice on Work PCs
BELMONT, CALIF. - October 16, 2007 - FaceTime Communications, the
leading provider of solutions that control greynets and manage unified
communications in the enterprise, today announced the results of its annual
survey, "Greynets in the Enterprise: 3rd Annual Survey of Trends, Attitudes and
Impact."
In September 2007, data was collected in a survey of more than 700 employees
and IT managers to determine the impact greynet applications have on companies
and organizations. Greynets - real-time consumer applications (e.g instant
messaging, P2P, VoIP) that are often introduced by individual end users and use
highly evasive techniques to traverse the network - pose myriad network and
information security risks because they provide vectors for malware,
intellectual property loss, identity theft and compliance risks.
According to the study, greynet use has increased dramatically within the
workplace. An average of nine greynets are in use within the typical
organization, and 99 percent of IT managers report at least one greynet in use
at their locations. In spite of deploying security infrastructure such as
firewalls and IPS products, nine in 10 IT managers have experienced a
greynet-related security incident in the last six months. In fact, only about 3
percent have avoided greynet-related security incidents during this period.
While some greynets such as Skype, instant messaging (IM) and Web conferencing
have legitimate business uses, IT requires visibility and control to ensure
their safe and productive use. With other greynets, such as P2P file sharing,
video streaming and anonymizers, the risks might outweigh the benefits and
organizations need the ability to accurately detect and block them. Greynets
can be evasive on the network, often circumventing the traditional security
infrastructure that was designed for e-mail and standard Web traffic.
The
survey shows that the average cost companies incur in recovering from
greynet-related incidents on company PCs has more than doubled over last year.
IT managers reported spending an average of nearly $289,000 annually to repair
or re-image company PCs after malware attacks over greynets. The cost reported
in last year's study was nearly $130,000 per year. On average, IT managers
experience nearly 39 incidents per month that require some kind of repair or
remediation to end-user PCs and each repair requires, on average, about nine
hours of work.
Employees don't always see eye-to-eye with IT management regarding risky
behavior on the network. For example, 80 percent of IT managers deem
anonymizers - applications that disguise network traffic to permit anonymous
use of the Internet - risky to corporate networks. In contrast, just more than
half of users (57 percent) find them risky, for a 19 percent differential in
risk assessment.
The bottom line is that greynet usage makes IT nervous: 40 percent of IT
managers report that public IM use at work poses "serious risk," while another
46 percent indicate that IM poses "some risk," for a total of 86 percent of
managers who are wary of the public IM networks and their impact on the work
environment.
Employee Attitudes Regarding Greynet Use
In FaceTime's previous two annual surveys, employees candidly proclaimed their
belief that they have the right to download the applications they need onto
their work PCs, regardless of whether or not those applications are sanctioned
by IT. This trend continues, with 36 percent of employees proclaiming this
right in this year's survey. In addition, 40 percent of employees said that
they need more applications than are typically installed on their work PCs.
This trend underscores the need for IT management to work more closely with
employees both to understand changing workplace needs, as well as to educate
the workforce on security and compliance issues facing the organization.
In addition, this year's survey reveals:
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Eighty-five percent of employees report that they use their work PCs for
"personal, non-work purposes," and among these employees, 38 percent send
personal IMs or engage in chat while at work.
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The personal use of work computers is independent of company size. Across the
board, approximately eight in 10 will surf, shop and chat over the company
network, testimony to the continued blurring of personal and professional
workspaces.
-
Fewer than half - 45 percent - of employees are at work locations where
personal IM messaging is monitored by the organization.
-
The number of work locations with eight or more greynet applications in use has
almost tripled in the last three years.
Greynet Concerns in Unified Communications Deployments
Concerns about the impact of greynets also extend to organizations that have or
are actively planning the roll-out of unified communications (UC) applications
- 44 percent of those surveyed. Larger companies, measured by employee size,
are twice as likely to roll out UC compared to small companies. And, not
surprisingly, security is the top concern for IT managers who are rolling out
UC. Eighty-six percent of IT managers ranked security as their top concern,
while only 65 percent indicated that return on investment (ROI) is a top
concern.
The survey revealed that 45 percent of IT managers are at work locations where
enterprise IM or unified communications are deployed. However, even at these
locations, 74 percent report that public IM networks are also used by
employees.
"Deploying enterprise IM or a unified communications platform can lead an
organization to believe that it has given employees all the capabilities they
need to collaborate effectively," said Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing
and product management for FaceTime. "However, the reality is that employees
will continue to download new greynets at their own pace and will continue to
use the consumer-oriented applications they are familiar with, both for work-
and non-work-related communications."
Growing Compliance Concerns
In addition to security concerns, regulatory and corporate governance
requirements have prompted an unprecedented emphasis on compliance for IM and
other real-time communications in use within enterprises.
-
Sixty-eight percent of IT managers are at work locations where there are
specific guidelines and polices that govern the archiving and storage of IM,
e-mail and chat communications.
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Fifty-three percent of IT managers have received guidance from their corporate
counsel concerning the archiving and storage of e-mails, IMs, chats and other
employee communications.
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Forty-five percent of organizations would be unable to produce an archive or
record of a specific employee's IM communications, if required to do so for
legal purposes.
-
Thirty-two percent of the companies that have deployed enterprise IM also
report they are incapable of producing logs of employee IM communications.
The full report, "Greynets in the Enterprise: 3rd Annual Survey of Trends,
Attitudes and Impacts," is available from FaceTime at
www.facetime.com/greynetsurvey2007.
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 ten 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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