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FaceTime Announces New Instant Messaging and Peer-to-Peer Electronic Communications Gateway for Network Security

IM Guardian Latest Addition to Award-Winning Suite of Solutions for the Security, Management and Control of IM and Other Real-Time Communications in the Enterprise

FOSTER CITY, Calif.-June 16, 2003 -- Building upon over four years of experience delivering enterprise infrastructure and business solutions that extend the power of instant messaging (IM) and other forms of real-time communications in the enterprise, FaceTime Communications today announced IM Guardian, an enterprise security gateway designed and optimized for managing complex, real-time communication technologies such as IM and peer-to-peer (P2P) communications, Web teleconferencing, and voice over IP (VoIP). IM Guardian gives network security administrators the ability to safely embrace legitimate business usage of IM and P2P by addressing the application vulnerability, network security and bandwidth issues associated with their use while blocking illegitimate, non-business usage altogether.

According to a recent study by Gartner, "70% of enterprises were flooded with instant messages, creating a communications environment where mass adoption reigned in the face of IT resistance." Similarly, the popularity of P2P file-sharing is growing at an exponential rate. KaZaA, one of the most widely used P2P applications, recently announced that over 200 million users have downloaded its P2P product. The rapid proliferation of these and other real-time applications creates IT challenges in distinguishing legitimate business use from non-business use.

"IM and P2P client applications today are capable of exhibiting harmful behavior whereby random ports on the firewall are opened allowing unauthorized network traffic to pass through," said Matt Cain, vice president at META Group. "In addition to draining bandwidth, this exposes the network to potential attacks, such as the recent "fizzer" worm which affected KaZaA P2P. Companies need to aggressively deploy management and security tools that enable organizations to maximize the business benefits of IM and P2P, while mitigating risks associated with security and employee misuse."

IM Guardian extends the core real-time management and control capabilities of the FaceTime IM Director solution (see today's related FaceTime announcement). Designed to be deployed in the corporate DMZ, IM Guardian acts a security gateway for real-time communications, providing blocking or management and control protection from application vulnerabilities, policies for application behavior, dynamic port negotiation, network usage statistics, and anti-virus scanning for file transfers. IM Guardian detects and enforces application behavior based on patterns in the OSI model's application layer to protect against unauthorized use, and is designed to seamlessly deploy within existing network security infrastructure. IM Guardian complements existing enterprise network security products and firewalls.

"As more companies realize the benefits of IM and P2P, it is important for network administrators to know and have control over how the applications themselves behave over the network," said Rahul Abhyankar, senior product manager at FaceTime Communications. "If left unmanaged altogether, these applications can be used as Trojan horses to attack the network at a later time. IM Guardian is designed to provide enterprises with IM and P2P security at multiple levels, and works hand-in-hand with FaceTime's enterprise IM management suite of security, management and control solutions."

IM Guardian offers key functionality in three areas: 1) detection, 2) protection, 3) extension and integration:

Detection:

Detect network behavior of all popular public IM networks and P2P applications

Detailed usage reports on IM and P2P network activity, including network bandwidth and application behavior reports

Seamless deployment within existing network infrastructure

Protection:

Block illegitimate IM and P2P application behavior

Control legitimate use of IM and P2P application behavior

Prevent unauthorized connections

Ensure authorized ports are used for firewall and proxy traversal to prevent port crawling

Protect from messages that exploit protocol vulnerabilities

Anti-virus scanning for file transfers supporting McAfee and other popular virus scanning solutions

Extension and Integration:

Integration for authorized interaction with popular firewalls

Integration with FaceTime's suite of enterprise IM management and control solutions installed behind the corporate firewall

Extendable to other forms of real-time communications in the future

Key Benefits:

Enterprise-grade architecture with support for Red Hat Linux

Embrace the legitimate use of productive-enhancing real-time applications such as IM

Block the unauthorized use of non-productive and bandwidth intensive real-time applications such as P2P

Seamless integration with FaceTime's enterprise IM management suite of security, management and control solutions

IM Guardian will be generally available in Q3 2003. For additional sales information, FaceTime can be reached at http://www.facetime.com/imwithus.htm, (888) 349-FACE, or via IM screen name FaceTimeLive.

FaceTime provides its customers with a comprehensive approach to the centralized security, management and control of real-time communications in the enterprise. The company's enterprise IM management suite of solutions enables IT organizations to apply standard business use policies to all diverse methods of real-time communications on any public, private or enterprise network.

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 four consecutive years, FaceTime's award-winning solutions are used by more than 900 customers – including nine of the 10 largest U.S. banks – for security, management and compliance of real-time communications. FaceTime supports or has strategic partnerships with all leading public and enterprise IM network providers, including AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Skype, IBM, Reuters and Jabber.

FaceTime is headquartered in Belmont, California. 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 communications.

PR Contact:

Emily Chamberlin
650-762-2945
echamberlin@ar-edelman.com

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