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• you can ever find it again, even though you know it's in that pile somewhere
• it will be complete, maybe the dog ate half of it
• that it will come back looking the same, maybe you spilled coffee on it or you printed out several pages and they've been mixed up so the order is wrong
  
• that someone else can look through the pile and find the piece of paper
• different things of difference genres or sizes will fit or stay in the pile properly

2010 marks my tenth year with FaceTime - and I've seen some changes in those 10 years - no more so than in the Financial Services sector, where Vantage, the product that I manage excels.  Having a third party organization verify that is exceedingly gratifying - and that's what happened recently.  At the SC Magazine Europe Awards in London, Vantage was unveiled as the Best Security Solution for Financial Services.

Perhaps it's the pedigree - Vantage is based on the equally award winning IMAuditor, perhaps it's the new features that we rolled out recently (from support for Microsoft OCS CAC, to Group Chat support and Skype).  Maybe it's the product manager....

Ultimately, I think its that we absolutely understand the requirements of financial institutions, their reliance on real time communications, rigorous regulatory requirements and we do this alongside our understanding of the real time collaborative internet. 

Features such as real-time logging and policy for Microsoft Group Chat, data leak prevention for file transfers, zero day worm protection, inline legal disclaimers and a full 360 degree audit capability make Vantage uniquely positioned in heavily regulated industries such as Financial Services.

Who am I kidding, of course it's all due to the product management....

Brian Babin is Director of Product Management for FaceTime's Vantage and Insight products and celebrates his tenth year with the company in 2010

The drive to extend collaboration outside of our own network boundaries has never been so strong.  Whether our drivers are to save cost, a geographically challenged work force, a diverse supply chain network or reduce time to market - we're all looking to collaborate and communicate with individuals who don't necessarily adhere to the same security, management and compliance controls that you have on your network.

And we're using a variety of tools, I hesitate to admit to how many different applications I use to communicate, not just internally here at FaceTime, but with suppliers around the world, our channel and strategic partners, prospects and customers.  It's probably a good exercise actually to think about that right now.

My real time communications tools:

• Microsoft OCS
• Microsoft Live Meeting
• IBM Lotus Sametime
• Lotus Sametime Unyte
• Cisco Webex
• Skype
• Windows Live (MSN)
• AOL
• Yahoo
• GoogleTalk

Wow.  There's a wonder I ever get any work done with that little lot eh?

But I'm not unique.  It's representative of the world in which we work now - that enterprise deployed Unified Communications platforms, like OCS and Sametime are co-existing alongside those Web 2.0 tools that I installed myself - because - well because that's how I communicate with different folks around the world.

The need to secure and manage the whole picture has never been stronger either. The same risks apply in our 2.0 world as always did in a 1.0 world - so whether your bugbear is inbound threats, outbound data leakage and managing your errant employees - all these areas require consideration.  I guess the only problem is that in a 2.0 real time world - the issue becomes apparent, well, in real time.

Compliance too affects real time communications.  Regulatory bodies, from the SEC, FINRA, HIPAA to the Financial Services Authority have all issued guidelines and rules on use and retention of real time communications - they are, after all, simple electronic communications, and subject to the same regulation - AND LEGISLATION - that your email is.

If you want to take a look at just how much growth there has been in the usage of real time communications tools and how prepared the average organization is to deal with security, management and compliance issues- take a look at the results of FaceTime's fifth annual survey - and compare it to what's going on in your organization.

Today, we launched Vantage, the successor to IMAuditor. 

IMAuditor - farewell old friend, but our world has moved well beyond pure IM and just auditing - Vantage heralds the new standard for security, management and compliance for real time and Unified Communications - giving you a vantage point, a view, visibility and control over all facets of real time and unified communications and the individual tools and capabilities in those platforms. Vantage also gives you a significant advantage - from managing OCS CAC, to controlling federation, non registered employees, logging Sametime announcements - and across the widest range of UC platforms and public IM networks which now includes Skype.

Why not take a look for yourself? - and bring your security, management and compliance for unified communications up to the new standard.

Sarah Carter, who can also be reached on old fashioned email:  scarter@facetime.com

Today's guest blogger is Ajay Madan.  Ajay heads the Quality Assurance division of FaceTime. He has several years of experience working on products related to Network Security and Compliance. He is actively involved in working with the product and support engineering teams in devising and implementing processes and methodologies that ensure a high degree of quality for FaceTime's products. He has been closely tracking the developments in the social media space, the business impact due to the same and shares some of his thoughts in this article.

Take it away Ajay.

In recent months, there has been an increasing media attention on social networking sites; and how this impacts business, compliance, security and so on. Some staggering statistics (which I reference later in this article) have been thrown in to demonstrate the crazy adoption rates of the social media.

Social media, it appears,  is here to stay and companies are now understanding that it's not about blocking access now, but realizing that controlling and enabling access is the way forward.. It would sound naive to assume leadership teams in companies haven't yet begun this process, some still block access, others are engaging with vendors that help manage and control the use of social media, and some are just giving it some more time. So in this post, I don't focus too much on the statistics or impact of social media but look at the next steps for companies who understand the need to manage social media.

There are several aspects for CIOs/Head of IT departments to consider while evaluating policies for social media as well as for evaluating solutions to manage social media usage in the network.

Compliance Considerations

FINRA in their recent webinar indicated that companies will not be given a compliance grace period because Social Media technology is new and evolving. FINRA has asked companies to not allow usage of Social Media if they cannot supervise it or the social media site does not support archival. Bottom line - Companies must retain, archive and retrieve to be compliant.

If you are in a regulated industry, such as the financial services sector, you need to consider tools that either allow you to block access to unsanctioned social media and/or invest in a solution that allows you to monitor, archive and review content posted through social media.

Security Considerations

Perhaps another key question in the IT manager's mind pertains to security, There can be several concerns in this area -

• Its possible that users may leak sensitive information about the company through a post on Twitter or Facebook Wall
• Users in a regulated industry sending information - perhaps patient information via Facebook or Twitter
• Users with, lets say, corporate Facebook accounts using foul language in their posts.
• The potential for hidden malware, Trojans and the like in applications, perhaps such as the myriad of games and applets on Facebook.

A solution for Web 2.0 should provide or extend security controls to social media to address such concerns.

Policy Considerations

Some industries require a rich policy framework or workflow that allows the following -

• Ability to be able to moderate posts on social media before they are allowed to be posted to the actual site
• Ability to capture or moderate content that matches certain lexicons or pre-configured policy elements.
• Workflow for compliance officers to review the posted content
• Workflow to archive content for long term storage by inter-operating with enterprise archival systems and easy retrieval.

Bandwidth Considerations

There are certainly organizations and industries that do not have compliance requirements for social media, but who do need controls on bandwidth consumption. The common problem today is that companies have no way to measure the amount of time employees spend on social networking websites and in the past this has been recognized as a huge problem as it potentially impacts productivity. Hence this could be a core requirement for many companies.

Consider looking at solutions that allow you to set bandwidth limits for usage of social media.

Existing Infrastructure Considerations

Many IT departments are wary of having multiple vendors for different communication modalities and for the ease of management prefer to select those that provide functionality across all the considerations I referenced - as well as being able to provide these functionalities across other communications modalities, like IM and Unified Communications.

Consider an Evolving Market

Social media is new technology and will continue to evolve. Companies should look at solutions providers who have expertise in real time communications traffic, at those who adapt quickly to new technologies and who consider social media as part of a communications strategy, not in isolation.

Finally, I want to plug the solution that I work on. I've been with this product since it's inception and have seen it grow to become the first Secure Web Gateway that combines features, functions and controls for social media alongside other communications modalities.  Our Unified Security Gateway is uniquely positioned to address all the considerations I outlined above and helps companies manage not just social media across a broad spectrum of requirements - but web traffic on the whole, and more than 4,000 web and internet applications, from IM to remote control tools, to P2P tools. 

Now, I'll leave you with some pretty phenomenal statistics if you know any of those folks who are looking the other way when it comes to adopting social media.

But do check back on March 2nd when we launch the results of our fifth annual survey - and let me know what YOU'RE doing with social media.

Ajay

Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

LinkedIn

http://techcrunch.com/2009/02/14/as-the-economy-sours-linkedins-popularity-grows/

Twitter

http://mashable.com/2009/01/09/twitter-growth-2008/

I read a short article in InvestmentNews today about a new social web site, LinkedFA, which is promoting itself as the "first and only Finra-compliant social networking site for financial professionals." I immediately thought to myself, how can a social networking site tout itself as Finra-compliant when Finra hasn't released its compliance guidelines yet? Finra postponed its introductory webinar until March.

Then I asked myself the larger question; why would financial professionals want a 'walled-garden' social media site in the first place? Doesn't that kind of defeat the objective? If you're a financial advisor, don't you want to be where your prospects are? A site dedicated to financial professionals is fine for connecting with people within your industry but it doesn't help you reach new customers.

Consider that there are currently more than 250 million Facebook users, 30 million Twitter users, and 25 million executives on LinkedIn. That's where the conversations are taking place. That's where you can reach customers and prospects.

Isn't it better to participate in this larger, open conversation taking place on the Web and develop best practices, with the help of technology, to make sure that those conversations are appropriately logged and accounted for? That's the best way to assure compliance, whether it's for Finra, the SEC, or some other regulatory agency.

Our financial services customers rely on FaceTime's IMAuditor and Unified Security Gateway to not only secure their networks, but to manage and log content for regulatory compliance.

That way they get the best of all worlds:

1) centralized control of online conversations stored on their own servers so they can be audited for compliance;

2) the ability to support any public social media site in a secure manner and 

3) the ability to allow their traders and other employees to use the application that is best suited to the job, whether that's Yahoo, Reuters, YellowJacket, Facebook or Twitter  - we don't mind, because, well, we support them all.

My team have put together a 30 minute briefing on "What you can stand to gain and lose with Social Media" - why not join them on January 27^th at either 10 eastern or 10 pacific?

Last month we announced that Check Point Software Technologies had purchased our application database for use in their products. According to Check Point, this technology will "... provide businesses unparalleled granular control over application usage and enable security administrators to prevent threats associated with the use of certain Internet applications. Check Point will offer this new level of security controls as a Software Blade that will be available for all gateways." (read their release here: )

This deal reaffirms our leadership in the Web 2.0 security space. More importantly, it highlights the growing need for network solutions that provide visibility and control at the application level not just at the port & protocol level. Check Point sees this need and will use our database to provide application level control. Application level control will become the price of entry in the Firewall market.

But beyond visibility and control, what enterprises are asking for is "enablement".

• How do I allow access to Facebook or LinkedIn and stay in compliance with FINRA or FERC or HIPAA or PCI or [insert your favorite regulation here]?

• How do I allow access to YouTube videos but not the inappropriate stuff?

• How do I allow access to blogs and wikis and webmail but ensure that confidential information if not getting posted?

Our customers realize they can't block access to the New Internet - they must enable it.

Which is why our mission statement reads "Secure & ENABLE the New Internet"

Today's guest blogger is Eric Young.  Eric is FaceTime's Sr, Director of Field Services, and works with FaceTime customers to implement leading edge security and compliance solutions for Unified Communications and Web 2.0.  Eric's worldwide role gives him an insight into the global requirements of organizations implementing real time communications technologies to enable their businesses and works closely with our product team to ensure that FaceTime solutions remain at the forefront of the industry.

Yesterday's solution doesn't address today's issues.

I was onsite with a customer recently completing our fifth competitive replacement within the Fortune 400 in the past 6 months.  As the customer was detailing all of the requirements the previous solution did not satisfy, it made me wonder, how are other customers of these competitors feeling they are operating in a compliant fashion? 

If you, as a compliance officer or legal counsel, cannot make sense of a group chat conversation, cannot actually view the content of a blocked message, or can't see what folks are trying to post to a social networking site; how can you possibly defend your organization from SEC fines or from a lawsuit in a court of law? 

Security technologies evolve quickly, especially in the area of real-time communications - but the adoption of tools like Unified Communications, Instant Messaging and social media has grown exponentially - in many cases even without the knowledge of either IT or compliance.

Regulation and compliance changes too, with the times.  Most recently I've seen FINRA starting to address the issue of social media and issuing guidelines to member organizations and individuals on how usage should be treated. 

We all understand there is a big difference between "logging" and "being compliant" but knowing there are still some banks and other highly regulated companies using these legacy solutions that were designed for technology of a few years back, it begs the questions:  What are the minimum requirements for security and compliance for Unified Communications, Instant Messaging and Social Media?

And, what are you doing about dealing with emerging technology?

For the fourth consecutive year, FaceTime has commissioned a survey of IT managers and end users to track the use of Internet-based applications - things like IM, Skype, P2P, social networking and other Web 2.0 apps. We also surveyed employee attitudes toward use of those applications and their impact on IT and the organization in terms of security, data leakage and compliance.

As in prior years, the research was conducted among a large sample of corporate IT managers and end users across all size organizations in North America, UK and Europe. The research study includes compiled data from more than 500 IT managers and end users. The results are quite revealing.

• Use of consumer oriented Internet applications has reached 97% of organizations, up from 85% in 2007 and, on average, companies report 9.3 applications in use by its employees on the enterprise network
• 73% of IT managers report at least one security incident as a result of Internet application usage; Viruses, Trojans and worms (59%) are most common, followed by spyware (57%) for a close second
• 37% of companies report an instance of non-compliance; 27% report accidental data leakage
• IT managers report an average of 34 incidents per month, and the largest companies project $125K monthly to remediate Internet usage related security, compliance and data leakage issues
• 51% of end users access social media sites at least once per day and  79% of employees use social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, You Tube) at work for business reasons
• Sixty-eight percent of IT managers have archiving and retrieval methods for corporate email. About half that many--31 percent--store IM communications. One in four has copies of audio conferences (25%), while slightly fewer (20%) archive corporate Web conferences
• If requested by corporate attorneys to reproduce IM communications--in the event of a lawsuit, for example--51 percent of IT managers could not do it. Thirty-eight percent because they have no such capabilities and 13 percent could do it but not in any practical time frame
• Unified Communications suites exist at about 29 percent of IT respondent organizations. Ten percent have deployed pilots to a limited number of users, while 19 percent have deployed UC for the majority of their endusers

We'll be delving into various aspects of this exhaustive survey in the coming weeks, to break down just what this data is telling us about what's happening on corporate networks and what it means to both IT managers and end users.