FaceTime Upgrades Real-Time To Fight Security Breach

Real-Time Guardian 3.0 works at the perimeter to enforce policies for instant messaging, peer-to-peer network traffic and other so-called "greynet" activities such as Webmail applications, said Kailash Ambwani, president and CEO of FaceTime, Foster City, Calif.

The company is segmenting the product series to better target the midmarket, Ambwani said.

Real-Time Guardian 100 is designed for branch offices and companies with fewer than 100 users; Real-Time Guardian 500 is a 1U box for up to 5,000 users; and Real-Time Guardian 1000 scales beyond that point. Pricing for the products starts at $2,500, and a spyware/adware module costs $2,500 for a one-year subscription.

From a technical standpoint, the update adds adware- and spyware-protection capabilities to the core product that will act to prevent installation of malware that slips through other defenses, said Jonathan Christensen, CTO and vice president of products at FaceTime. In addition to instant messaging, the appliance monitors stealth traffic from P2P technologies and services including Kazaa, Morpheus, EDonkey and Hopster. The technology can be configured to allow legitimate activities using these protocols, Christensen added. "When it morphs, we'll be right there with it," he said.

Arsenio Batoy, president of Optical Laser, a Huntington Beach, Calif.-based VAR, said FaceTime's technologies were a natural extension to his company's core product offerings, which address compliance and archiving solutions.

When it comes to the eradication of instant-messaging threats, FaceTime also has an impressive arsenal of intellectual property that prevents malware in the first place, Batoy said.

Moreover, the company's "philosophical" approach to VARs and systems integrators is encouraging. "They really get it in terms of the channel," Batoy said.

Ambwani said FaceTime currently works with about 200 partners, but only 10 percent of its annual revenue is generated through the channel.

By the end of 2006, he said that number should be closer to 40 percent as the vendor ramps up its recruitment of two types of VARs: those focused on archiving and compliance applications and those with a broader, security-focused solutions practice.