FaceTime Adds Support For BlackBerry Compliance To its IMAuditor Solution
IMAuditor version 9.7 logs, archives SMS messages from corporate BlackBerrys to meet corporate governance and compliance regulations
May 13, 2009
PRESS RELEASE
BELMONT, Calif., May 12, 2009 " FaceTime Communications, the leading provider of solutions enabling the safe use of Web 2.0 and unified communications in the enterprise, today introduced key new capabilities for its IMAuditor security and compliance software. IMAuditor now monitors SMS messages sent by corporate BlackBerry users and provides real-time visibility and logging of group chats conducted via Microsoft's Office Communications Server (OCS).
FaceTime IMAuditor ensures security, management and compliance for unified communications -- from presence and instant messaging to conferencing and voice -- and has been continually developed to meet new challenges since its debut in 2001.
Support for BlackBerry Messaging The new IMAuditor version 9.7 integrates with BlackBerry Enterprise Server to capture SMS and PIN messages (PIN allows users to send messages between BlackBerry devices based on their personal identification numbers). This enables managers to monitor messages sent by corporate BlackBerry users, an increasingly important requirement for companies in regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare and energy. For example, regulations in the financial services sector, such as the US's SEC and the UK's FSA as well as other regional financial services authorities, demand that all electronic records -- including communication sent via instant messaging and SMS " be logged and archived.
Beyond the financial services sector, the advent of broad-based regulations, such as PCI, Sarbox and e-Discovery requirements, makes it increasingly important to monitor, control and archive enterprise messaging. The growing popularity of BlackBerries represents a new messaging channel that needs to be addressed.
"As mobile devices " led by the BlackBerry platform " become more widely deployed, a greater proportion of corporate data will be sent from and to these devices", said Michael Osterman, President of Osterman Research, Inc. "Organizations that do not adequately manage and archive the content on these devices run the risk of creating serious regulatory, legal and data management problems that they could easily avoid."
"President Obama, a well-known BlackBerry user, announced his running mate using SMS, clearly demonstrating that this form of communication is both highly effective and an accepted professional tool," said Kailash Ambwani, chief executive officer for FaceTime. "Yet, many companies can't allow their employees to use any communication tool that cannot be tracked. With IMAuditor 9.7, we enable our customers to use SMS and PIN messages on their corporate BlackBerries " safely increasing productivity."
IMAuditor 9.7 also provides real-time monitoring and compliance capabilities for group chats within Microsoft's OCS. This functionality was recently introduced in OCS Release R2 and allows users to create topic-based chat rooms. IMAuditor gives visibility into who joined and who left a particular chat room, and when. Management can therefore determine exactly who was privy to certain parts of the conversation. While group chat is a new feature in OCS, it's been available as a stand-alone application for several years and has developed a large user-base over time, hence the need for a solution to monitor these electronic conversations. As a Gold Level ISV Partner of Microsoft, FaceTime is the only vendor that provides this capability.
IMAuditor is used by Fortune 1000 companies including nine of the top 10 U.S. banks and the majority of global financial services firms to secure and manage real-time communications. IMAuditor ensures that instant messaging and unified communications platforms can be safely used without compromising security, allowing information leakage or impacting productivity. IMAuditor is also used to meet regulatory and corporate requirements, including e-Discovery, which demand logging, archiving and easy retrieval of messaging communications.
About IMAuditor FaceTime IMAuditor is a full-featured proxy that secures and manages all public and enterprise unified communications use over an organization's network. The IMAuditor, which resides on the Local Area Network, scans the system and applies established policies to all the popular types of files transferred over unified communications platforms. This includes Microsoft OCS and IBM Lotus Sametime, as well as public networks such as AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, GoogleTalk Windows Live (MSN), and now BlackBerry messaging.
The software analyzes and detects sensitive or confidential information in both messages and file attachments, prevents transmission of the information, and warns users about established company policy regarding the sharing of corporate intellectual property.
IMAuditor maintains an integrated trust relationship with FaceTime's secure Web gateway appliance, the Unified Security Gateway (USG). Working together, IMAuditor and USG deliver complete end-to-end security, management and compliance for real-time communications in the enterprise, ensuring that corporate data is protected both from outside threats such as spyware, viruses and worms, as well as from intentional or unintentional information leakage from within the company.
IMAuditor 9.7 is available now from FaceTime and authorized distributors, resellers and partners worldwide. For pricing and additional information, call 1-888-349-3223 or visit www.facetime.com.
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 five consecutive years, FaceTime's award-winning solutions are used by more than 1,000 customers for security, management and compliance of real-time communications. FaceTime supports or has strategic partnerships with all leading public and enterprise IM network and unified communications providers, including AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Skype, IBM and Jabber.
FaceTime is headquartered in Belmont, Calif. 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.
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