FaceTime Real-Time Guardian (RTGuardian, or RTG) and the vendor's Greynet Enterprise Manager (GEM) combine to form a platform called FaceTime Internet Security Edition, which provides management controls and monitoring for multiple types of Internet communications, including Web browsing, IM, P2P, and Skype in Enterprise deployments. The platform allows for both the identification and management of spyware/IM/P2P communications as they pass through the gateway (RTG), as well as a centralized reporting and management component that includes the ability to manage multiple RTG appliances as well as provide targeted remediation capabilities for spyware infected PCs (GEM). When RTG encounters a spyware infected PC (via identification of phone-home behavior) it can trigger GEM to scan and clean the PC for the known spyware. The platform is driven by automatic updates from the vendor's research team. Supported client PCs for the GEM capabilities include Windows NT/2000/2000 Server/XP/2003 Server/Vista.

On the perimeter, the FaceTime platform utilizes the RTGuardian appliance; a mini-1U hardened Linux box that recgonizes multiple protocols (including IM, P2P, and VoIP) and can provide policy-based access controls to both to Web surfing (via the user's choice of the vendor's own URL database, or Secure Computing's SmartFilter DB) and real-time Internet communications. The gateway deployed appliance blocks "phone home" attempts from identified spyware, blocks user access to known spyware sites, and reports infected PCs and the spyware they contain (via recognition of phone-home attempts) to the centralized management platform (GEM) facilitating targeted remediation efforts.

Additional features of RTG include the ability to block communications across undesired public IM networks, blocks direct IM client-to-client communications, blocks targeted IM application features including file transfers, image transfers, etc., and blocks selected P2P and/or VoIP applications (including KaZaA, Morpheus, Skype, more).

RTG is offered in four flavors, depending on the throughput needs of the organization.

GEM receives alerts from the RTGuardian appliance and provides the ability to scan, clean, or inoculate an infected PC to isolate it from reinfection without requiring client components on the PC itself. Additionally, GEM provides aggregated reporting capabilities for multiple, distributed RTG appliances; providing real-time traffic monitoring capabilities and data on such metrics as actions taken on spyware infections and/or policy enforcements (access blocking, file transfer blocking, etc.) to the machine and user level, IM network activities, unauthorized port usage, attempted policy breaches, and more. The GEM Management Console further facilitates central device management of multiple RTG deployments.

New to GEM is support for the examination of inbound Skype text messages, enabling it to identify malicious URLs transmitted into the organization via Skype. Other new features in the latest release include PC discovery via AD lookups, user-triggered remediation via browsers, and support for Vista desktop.

GEM integrates with and requires the RTGuardian appliance; however, RTGuardian can be purchased and deployed independently. Additionally, the vendor offers their FaceTime Enterprise bundle, which includes RTG, GEM, and the vendor's user-level IM auditing, compliance, and management product, IMAuditor.

All products are available now. Contact FaceTime for further information.

product submission by EITPlanet Staff

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