Today, the online landscape is alive with participation and collaboration. In addition to Web 2.0 applications like IM, web conferencing, VoIP, and blogs, hundreds of social networking sites are available to anyone with a browser. Several have evolved into full-blown development platforms - Facebook alone supports almost 55,000 applications, known as 'widgets' or 'applets'. 65 million people used LinkedIn, 500 million use Facebook – with 35 million updating their status everyday. 5 billion pieces of information are shared each week through status updates and 3.5 million events are created on this, the most popular social network.

FaceTime's annual survey has shown that 15% of users use a social network "constantly throughout the day", with 61% using social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter at least once a day.

All this openness and collaboration between social and business networks means many more opportunities exist for business assets and intellectual property to leave the safety of the corporate environment, and many more opportunities for unauthorized and unethical entities to gain access.

Left unsecured and unmanaged, widespread use of social networking can:

Create holes for information leakage, resulting in the loss of confidential information
Expose organizations to legal liabilities and financial penalties from compliance breaches
Compromise network security from malware spread through real-time channels

Increasingly regulators and legislators are specifically calling out what organizations should do in the area of social networking – from record retention to applying security measures and requiring content controls. Socialite from FaceTime enables the secure, managed and compliant use of Social Networks.

Ninety-five percent of users now use social media and social networking at work for work or personal reasons. This shows an increase of 14% since the FaceTime 2008 survey, when we reported 81% of end users using social networking for personal reasons and 79% for work reasons.

Social networking activities are so wide-ranging that companies are clearly struggling to find appropriate policies to govern this new environment. Almost half the respondents in the survey know the use of social network sites, understand the risks and do not have policies in place to manage their use. As the line between corporate networks and social networks blurs, so the issue of social networks and their applications - many of which involve online communications - becomes an issue for enterprise IT.

The Social Network Challenge

FaceTime's Unified Security Gateway (USG) the only Secure Web Gateway to combine feature and content controls of social networks alongside the monitoring, management and security of Web 2.0 applications, such as instant messaging and Unified Communications, with URL filtering, anti-malware and Web anti-virus protection.

USG enables organizations to set up custom policies across multiple communications modalities - from IM, peer to peer networks, social networking applications and web traffic. USG integrates with LDAP and Active Directory servers to provide simplified group policy setting. Granular controls include quota setting by employee, time and bandwidth - across all real time communications modalities - including instant messaging and social networking sites. Customizable reporting capabilities provide for detailed analysis on employee web browsing and application usage by time spent, data downloaded and instant messaging content transferred.

USG enables companies to safely let their employees use FaceBook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and still meet stringent compliance and regulatory requirements With USG, enterprises can:

Manage access to and use of applications within social networking sites like Facebook according to established acceptable use policies

Lower the risks from inbound threats and outbound data leakage
Meet employee needs without impacting productivity or security
Maintain regulatory compliance through logging and archival

Moderate content posted to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter
Log and Archive all content posted to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter
Granular feature controls for Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter
Keep protection on track with dynamic updates of new social networking sites and applications hosted by those sites
Benefit from a single point for enablement, access management, security and control for web and real-time channels
Protect investment in security today by providing a platform on which future web-borne threat prevention can be built

With flexible deployment options, USG fits seamlessly into existing network topologies to offer the highest level of security with zero latency and a low total cost of ownership.

Learn more about Unified Security Gateway.