FaceTime
Instant Messaging (IM) usage in business – both sanctioned and not – is growing rapidly. And because IM opens up unsecured channels to the organisation, the hacker and virus-writing communities have not wasted any time in exploiting this growth. FaceTime allows you to regulate the use of IM within your organisation – eliminating the risks involved and securing your network.
Instant Messaging – The Advantage For Business
IM delivers tremendous gains in productivity by enabling real-time communications between co-workers and business partners.
The Issues Instant Messaging Can Cause
IM and spyware applications are both examples of ‘greynets’ – network enabled applications that operate outside the control of the corporate IT department. This in itself presents a problem, how do IT staff manage these greynet applications to enable productivity through the use of business enhancing tools, such as IM and those greynet applications which may have a detrimental effect, such as spyware?
If not regulated, IM can bring about added risks, these fit into three major categories:
- Inbound threats
IM creates new vectors for the distribution of malware (viruses, worms, spyware, rootkits and more) and SpIM (Spam over IM), which can cause a major drain on productivity and resources.
- Outbound threats
IM opens new ‘holes’ through which information can leak or be leaked, leading to user privacy concerns and the potential loss of intellectual property.
- Legal and financial threats
IM creates invisible communications channels that operate below the radar of conventional information security measures, exposing the organisation to regulartory compliance breaches.
If IM Presents So Many Problems, Why Don’t Organisations Simply Block Its Use?
IM presents many business advantages, including being able to communicate with your colleagues, suppliers and customers in real-time.
From a human perspective, IM blocking will simply result in unhappy employees and attempts to bypass the system, which may cause more problems than it solves.
From a technical point of view, these greynets are largely invisible to existing information security infrastructure such as firewalls, intrusion prevention and intrusion detection devices and proxies – because they are specifically designed to evade detection and provide ubiquitous access:
- IM clients use port trawling – the ability to exploit any open port on the firewall – so blocking the ‘visual’ port for the particular application doesn’t work.
- Every IM network provider has its own unique set of IP addresses to which clients can connect. These IP addresses change fequently or at random without notice, so firewalls and proxies cannot apply blocking policies using the typical black list of IP addresses.
- IM protocols are proprietary and constantly evloving to deliver new and more advanced features to users; firewalls and proxies do not evolve at this pace, nor do IT organisations want to be constantly updating protocol signatures on the firewall.
- The syncronous nature of real-time connections is much different from the asyncronous web browsing and email traffic; firewalls and proxies were not designed to inspect and analyse real-time communication traffic, so network performance suffers.
Managing The Risk
FaceTime offers a comprehensive IM and greynet security solution that prevents spyware and secures IM use, providing full visibility and granular control for all major real-time communication applications:
- Public IM Networks (AIM, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, ICQ and more)
- Enterprise IM Networks (LCS, Sametime, Antepo, Jabber, Parlano MindAlign)
- Professional Community Networks (Reuters, Bloomberg, Communicator Inc., Pivot Solutions)
- Web Conferencing (WebEx)
FaceTime facilitates the positive use of legitimate greynet applications, keeping employees productive while securing the organisation against new threat sources. By integrating with existing IT and information security infrastructure such as anti-virus, FaceTime anables maximum return on existing investments.
FaceTime offers comprehensive IM threat risk protection:
- Protection against inbound threats from viruses, worms, spyware, SpIm, and more by monitoring and managing real-time communication channels.
- Prevention of outbound threats caused by information leakage through content filtering, logging and archiving for all conversations.
- Ensuring compliance through TrueCompliance™ strict policy enforcement and user/group level controls.
All security controls are backed by FaceTime’s Security Labs, which automatically ensures that the latest detection mechanisms are deployed as soon as they become available, minimising the potential for zero-day infection.
For more information about FaceTime and IM security, or to discuss your network security, contact us on 0113 257 8955 or email info@sec-1.com