As instant messaging and peer to peer use continues to proliferate the enterprise, so do the
threats that come with them. To that end, FaceTime communications today launched a
pair of initiatives and a new product upgrade to stem the tide and secure P2P and IM
for corporate use.
The FaceTime Instant Response Security Team (FIRST) is an information and response
unit that will identify malicious global IM and P2P activity. The unit will also
provide countermeasures for the attacks that will be provided to the IT community as a
whole and also via automated product updates to FaceTime customers.
As a complementary
effort, FaceTime also announced its VAST (Vulnerability Assessment Survey and Test)
service that is intended to help enterprises locate any potential IM and/or P2P vulnerabilities
in their IT infrastructures.
The third leg of FaceTime’s IM/P2P security triumvirate is an updated version of its
RTGuardian appliance to version 2.0. The new appliance effectively doubles the security
of its predecessor, the RTG500TM, to cover more 40 IM and P2P protocols. Included in the new
protocols now secured by RT Guardian are the popular BitTorrent and eMule protocols.
“One of the things that we are seeing in the marketplace is that our enterprise customers
are looking at the next generation of security threats that are hitting them,”
Kailash Ambwani, CEO at FaceTime told internetnews.com. “They realize that the next
generation of threats have to deal with people inside of their organization who in most cases
unknowingly are downloading clients and things that are going from the inside out. IM and P2P
are examples of that.”
According to a recent
Radicati Group report
76 percent of organizations have not deployed a formal IM solution.
Beyond FaceTime, a number of other companies have also jumped into the fray to help companies
secure their IM and P2P usage.
In September, Jabber Inc
announced a new
plug-and-play IM appliance specifically geared for the IM needs of SMBs. Also in September
IMlogic announced
IM Detector Pro, its IM/P2P management tool, which is available for free download.
