P2P - Skype Control

P2P networks, once the province largely of music fans at home, are popping up on corporate desktops everywhere. Music, video, and other bandwidth hogging application clog networks and expose corporations to breach of copyright litigation.

New P2P applications like Skype, the popular Voice over IP program, offer potentially significant cost and productivity benefits, yet many organization’s still require control and visibility over their use.

P2P file sharing applications share one glaring problem - they are opening up huge, unmonitored, network security holes:

• Grokster offers free, fast searching and downloads, file previews and other apparently useful tools. Unfortunately it also degrades network performance and silently installs other less beneficial applications like Cydoor and Gator.
• Morpheus offers marketers the ability to track visits to high profile shopping sites. However, while it's doing so, it's installing a Web browser add-on that sends users on an invisible Web detour to capture information about surfing habits.

All of this poses a major challenge to IT departments - how to let users benefit from advances in P2P technology while providing a level of control and visibility that enables IT to block P2P connections that may endanger network security.

Security Risks of P2P

Because P2P networks are installed on local client machines and link directly to the Internet, those client machines are wide open to abuse that's uncontrolled by standard information security measures. The protocols used by these applications are stealthy, often encrypting themselves or tunneling undetected through open ports.

Over and above the potential for productivity loss and bandwidth and storage resource abuse through employee usage of unauthorized software, P2P networks can:

• Open up back doors into the network, allowing hackers direct access to corporate assets and putting the organization in breach of privacy legislation
• Enable the exchange of copyrighted material, rendering the corporation vulnerable to breach of copyright lawsuits
• Overload network bandwidth with unauthorized file sharing activities
• Allow bundled adware applications to be installed on the network without the user's knowledge

Given the seriousness of the risks and the potential damage to the organization that accompanies the uncontrolled use of P2P networks, IT departments need a powerful tool that will enable the productive use of P2P while protecting against their intentional or unintentional abuse. Point products such as desktop anti-virus or anti-spyware solutions don't have the range of controls needed; Defense in Depth is the only way to allow access to the beneficial aspects of P2P without endangering network security.

P2P Control - The Solution

FaceTime offers the only end-to-end security solution that empowers IT departments to control the use of P2P networks, allowing organizations to:

• Prevent unauthorized P2P connections
• Easily detect and determine the validity of more than 100 P2P client variations and 18 P2P protocol groups
• Block unauthorized adware installations
• Ensure non-stop protection with the latest protocol updates
• Mitigate business and security risk
• Obtain critical insight into bandwidth abuse, source and destination IP addresses, and port abuse

Learn more about RTGuardian, FaceTime's P2P control and spyware prevention solution.