FaceTime Enhances Logging and Archiving Capabilities of IMAuditor to Ensure Compliance for Sametime and Microsoft OCS Customers

Features High Availability, Rich Compliance for Sametime 8.0 and Microsoft OCS, With Granular Controls for Audio and Video


BELMONT, CA--(Marketwire - March 6, 2008) - FaceTime Communications, the leading provider of solutions that control greynets and manage unified communications (UC) in the enterprise, today announced availability of an enhanced version of IMAuditor. It enables enterprises to benefit from their IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Office Communications Server deployments with a highly available, fault-tolerant and enhanced security and compliance infrastructure that includes support for new modalities like VoIP, video and Web conferencing.

FaceTime has seen growing concern among large organizations over the past several weeks, examining their ability to log, archive and retrieve instant messages.

The recent concern is fueled in part by news reports related to $7.1 billion in losses caused by a rogue trader at Société Générale, a large French bank. Earlier this month, instant messages reportedly exposed a new twist in the scandal surrounding the record losses. Other cases also have brought e-discovery to the news forefront in recent months, including a patent infringement trial involving Qualcomm Inc. and Broadcom Corp that resulted in fines to Qualcomm in excess of $9 million due to its slow response to e-discovery requests. (See related news release, "Unprecedented Fraud and Large Fines Highlight Compliance Requirements for Unified Communications," issued today.)

IMAuditor 9.1 helps organizations realize the benefits of UC and enterprise instant messaging deployments by providing guaranteed compliance to meet regulatory and corporate requirements, including logging, archiving and easy retrieval of Web conferencing data. The deep compliance protection also covers the content of instant messages and their attachments over public networks. For more information or to request a product evaluation, visit http://www.facetime.com/productservices/imauditor.aspx

According to the October 2007 survey, "Greynets in the Enterprise: Third Annual Survey of Trends, Attitudes and Impacts," commissioned by FaceTime and conducted by market research firm NewDiligence, 56 percent of organizations currently have plans to roll out unified communications solutions. Further, at locations where enterprise instant messaging is deployed, nearly three-fourths of IT managers report that public instant messaging is also in use by employees. For more information on the Greynets Survey, visit: http://www.facetime.com/solutions/greynets.aspx.

"Unified communications suites are becoming integral to the way employees work today," said Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing and product management for FaceTime Communications. "But IT managers are finding that their UC rollouts don't significantly reduce employee use of consumer-oriented Web 2.0 applications and public instant message networks. Security and compliance controls must extend across all UC modalities in this heterogeneous environment, both enterprise-sanctioned and consumer-oriented."

In addition to specific compliance policies that can be set to log and archive instant messages and Web conferencing conversations and attachments for individual users, granular controls in the new IMA 9.1 can be set to block or allow audio and video transmissions on a per-user basis, across all UC modalities.

Extending Compliance to All UC Modalities

Changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure adopted in December 2006 introduced a broad new definition of what constitutes discoverable electronically stored information. Under the new federal rules, companies need to keep track of all the e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents they store -- whether or not they define them as business records -- and, if involved in litigation, be able to produce their "electronically stored information" according to specific requirements as part of the litigation discovery process.

Electronically stored information includes all instant messages whether transmitted over a public or private instant message network or via a UC platform, and communication over Web conferencing systems such as Microsoft's Live Meeting. Put in simple terms, if the communication is saved electronically it is subject to the e-discovery rules.

However, according to FaceTime's Greynets Survey, only 68 percent of IT managers are at work locations where there are specific guidelines and policies that govern the archiving and storage of instant messages, e-mail and chat communications. Further, 45 percent of IT managers would be unable to produce a record of a specific employee's instant message communications if required to do so for legal purposes, and just 55 percent of IT managers surveyed have received guidance from their corporate counsel concerning the archiving and storage of e-mails, instant messages, chats and other employee communications.

New features in IMAuditor 9.1

--  Support for Sametime 8.0 includes ability to capture and store
    screenshots and custom emoticons within Sametime, for a complete picture of
    the conversation
--  Ability to log participants and set ethical boundaries within Live
    Meeting for enhanced compliance coverage for Web conferencing
--  Redundant connector capability for OCS to eliminate single point of
    failure, even within a single OCS front-end server
--  Support for Reuters Messaging 7, including full management, control,
    logging and archiving of RM Chat messages
--  Support for VMware as a deployment option to provide enhanced options
    for architecture scalability and redundancy
--  Consolidated transcript export option for easy retrieval and
    presentation in the event of an e-discovery process
--  Ability to import employee identities from nested directory groups for
    greater ease and flexibility of policy setting
--  Granular permissions to control audio and video across all
    applications for greater management and control
    

About IMAuditor

FaceTime IMAuditor is a full-featured instant messaging proxy that secures and manages all public and enterprise instant message use over an organization's network. IMAuditor, which resides on the LAN, maintains an integrated trust relationship with FaceTime's secure Web gateway appliance, the Unified Security Gateway (USG). These two products form FaceTime Enterprise Edition to 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 information leakage from within the company.

IMAuditor 9.1 is available now from FaceTime and authorized distributors 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 four consecutive years, FaceTime's award-winning solutions are used by more than 900 customers -- including nine of the ten 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.

FaceTime, FaceTime Communications, IMAuditor, RTGuardian, GEM, Facetime Enterprise Edition, FaceTime Security Labs, IMPact Index, SpywareGuide.com and the FaceTime logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of FaceTime Communications, Inc. Other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Contact Information: FaceTime Contact: Emily Chamberlin A&R Edelman 650-762-2945