FaceTime survey: IT managers okay social networking, as long as it's secure, compliant

FaceTime Communications - the leading provider of solutions enabling the safe use of Web 2.0 and unified communications in the enterprise - found in a survey that social networking is widely accepted by IT respondents, and 51% plan to beef up security within the next 12 months.

Compared with a related survey in Autumn 2008 ("The Collaborative Internet: Usage Trends, IT Attitudes and End User Impact"), many more IT professionals are reporting that social media is in use at their companies, up from 60% six months ago to 85% now.

FaceTime surveyed more than 1 100 prospects, customers and other IT professionals identified through Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo and LinkedIn between 21 May and 1 June.

"The widespread acceptance of social networking as a reality for the corporate network is a relatively new phenomenon," said Nishant Jadhav, director of Product Management for FaceTime Communications. "However, managers are already recognising the business value of social networking, with 31% of respondents seeing significant business value and only 21% seeing no business value."

More than half of respondents would like to see specific support for Web 2.0 integrated into their Web security platform, and nearly 20% would deploy dedicated solutions to control Web2.0.

"The reality that real-time communications and Web 2.0 applications are highly evasive is sinking in," said Sean Glansbeek, MD of Seven Days Technologies. "These applications are designed to get around Web filtering, firewalls and other traditional security measures through port crawling, tunnelling and onion routing."

Other findings:

* Thirty percent would not consider a Web security platform that did not have the ability to secure and manage social networking and Web 2.0 applications
* Thirty-two percent said social networking is a critical business collaboration tool
* Eighty-seven percent personally use social networks on the corporate network
* Eighty percent said information leakage is a primary concern with social networking use
* Fifteen percent said social networking is "blocked" on the corporate network
* Fifty-one percent estimate that employees use social networks at work more than an hour per day

Download the survey report: Social Networking in the Enterprise: Working, or Not Working.

FaceTime's Unified Security Gateway (USG) is a secure Web gateway appliance that integrates Web 2.0 application detection and control, gateway malware protection and Web filtering with FaceTime's best-in-class IM hygiene and archiving. With this single point of control, more than 2 100 Web and real-time applications and many thousands of social networking applications can be tracked, monitored and controlled to give organisations complete visibility into all Internet communications, and simplify administration.

With USG, IT administrators can set time of day or usage policies across all applications and view detailed reports to gain complete visibility into employee use of the network - not only in terms of browsing, but also specific Web 2.0 usage.

This complete visibility and control provides IT with a distinct advantage in managing network resources in addition to securing against inbound malware and putting controls in place to prevent outbound data leakage.