Twitter

Facetime Adds Sophos AV Protection to Unified Security Gateway

Facetime is a respected name in unified communications security. Its Unified Security Gateway, or USG 3.0, appliance allows enterprise administrators to control the web sites and applications that can be accessed by users, as well as monitoring and filtering content for Web 2.0 communications such as webmail, blogs, and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Aside from the goal of protecting intellectual property and sensitive information, the USG 3.0 appliance also provides the tools necessary to maintain legal and regulatory compliance related to network security and disclosing information.

Another threat that enterprise administrators have to contend with is malware and malicious attacks. Mike Rogers, vice president of Global Alliances and OEM for Sophos stressed the issue. “For the first six months of this year, SophosLabs detected 23,500 new infected Web pages–that’s one every 3.6 seconds. This statistic underscores the necessity of ensuring safe Web browsing, which includes virus and other malware protection.”

That is why Facetime is adding Sophos antivirus scanning and malware protection technologies to incorporate into the USG 3.0 appliance.

Why Twitter Works

The consumer masses may be under the impression that social networking is comprised only of MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. What they are not aware of is that there are many other tools and sites that have come and gone. Many may even still exist, but they haven’t gained the popularity or reached that critical mass necessary to catch the attention of mainstream consumers.

Why is that? What does one social networking site do different than another that causes one to capture the imagination and explode onto the Web, while others fade into obscurity? In this post, The Zen of Twitter, that question is examined as it relates to Twitter. One thing I like is the list of specific things that Twitter has done which seem to be working for them.

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Resistance is Futile

You will be assimilated (for those perhaps not as nerdy as me- that is a Star Trek reference to The Borg).

That is sort of how new technologies work. Instant messaging went from IRC (Internet Relay Chat) used primarily by uber-geeks, to services like AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) embraced by consumers, and eventually to platforms like Microsoft Office Communications Server providing instant messaging capabilities in the enterprise.

Perhaps you can relate to this. I know people who rejected my overtures to connect on LinkedIn. They didn’t want to join and fought the tide. Then eventually I get an email asking me to join their LinkedIn network. Ironically, many of those same friends told me they refused to join Facebook. They already had LinkedIn, so what was the point? Fast forward a few months and I am getting Facebook friend requests from these people. Then it was Twitter. Now all of those people who said that they wouldn’t join the silly networking service that only allows 140-characters per message are watching how it has transformed International politics and media in the recent post-election protest violence in Iran and thinking “maybe there is some value to that after all?”

In fairness, there have been a number of lesser services that have not reached the popular acceptance of Facebook or Twitter: Plaxo, Spock, Friendster, etc. so I can understand approaching new technologies with caution or a healthy dose of skepticism. But, those that achieve the critical mass necessary eventually go from fringe uber-geek technology, to popular consumer technology, and then to a business tool embraced by enterprises.

There is some overlap though between the features and functions of some of these services and the functionality delivered by unified communications. Can social networking be leveraged as a ‘poor man’s unified communications’? Do enterprises have to choose one or the other? Or, will there be some sort of convergence of services that enable the two worlds to peacefully co-exist in the enterprise?

Unified Communications & Social Networking

Many of the components included in unified communications started off or at least became mainstream in the consumer market. Instant messaging, web-based email, wikis, etc.. These technologies seem to catch fire as a grassroots movement from end-users jumping on the latest cutting edge technologies often before they even understand what the point of them is. Eventually, they become more mainstream and enterprises find ways to leverage or exploit them as well and they become integrated into the corporate network.

Unified communications is an established market, but also a young and evolving market at the same time. Web 2.0 and social networking continue to evolve almost exponentially as well. Where the two meet they can either assimilate and become one, or battle to the death for dominance. Read this article to learn more about a panel discussion at Interop 2009 focused on the future of unified communications and social networking convergence.

Social Networking on Company Time

Employees are only human. They take breaks. They get distracted. As companies demand more from fewer employees and blur the line between ‘work’ time and ‘personal’ time, it is to be expected that personal or non-business use of computer and network resources will occur. But, how much is too much?

A recent study by Facetime found that actual usage is about 10 times higher than what managers estimated employees were doing. Employees are using MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and many other social networking and Web 2.0 resources. This activity may exceed a reasonable amount of ‘personal’ time for some employees and it also has security implications for the enterprise. Check out this ITWeb article for a more detailed breakdown of what Facetime found in the study.

Power Users Push UC Envelope

Companies are typically slow and cautious to adopt new technologies. That is partially a function of due diligence and testing to ensure that any new technology or application will function properly and provide value before committing to adopting it. The larger the enterprise, the slower the process of migrating to new technologies or updating applications. Almost every organization has their share of power users though who push the technology envelope and start using bleeding edge technologies as soon as they hit the streets. These users tend to be the “better to ask for forgiveness than permission” crowd and simply attach their rogue devices and install their rogue applications and figure out how to make them work from within the enterprise. In general, this behavior should be discouraged. It can cause problems with the user desktop and the network. It can introduce unknown risks and make the enterprise network open to threats that the network and security administrators are not even aware of. With some technologies though, they reach a sort of “Hundredth Monkey” critical mass and resistance becomes futile. In those cases, organizations are better off trying to figure out the business benefits of the technology and how to incorporate it in a logical and secure way, rather than wasting resources trying to fight it. This article on SearchUnifiedCommunications addresses three consumer unified communications products which have gained in popularity and could serve as a pseudo test environment for organizations looking to define the business value of unified communications.