FaceTime secures MySpace

Steve Gold

FaceTime Communications, the greynet applications security specialist, has enhanced its Unified Security Gateway (USG) offering to secure and manage the MySpace applications environment.

The move, says the firm, gives companies the ability to exercise granular control on MySpace applications, many of which are developed by third parties and whose provenance can often be questionable.

Nick Sears, the firm's EMEA vice president, said that, as a new generation enters the workforce they expect to have access to the same social networking sites they use at home.

This access is important, he says, because it allows the new generation of workers to collaborate with colleagues and raises the company's overall business efficiency, whilst at the same time controlling applications that maybe harmful to the organisation.

According to FaceTime, the increasing use of social networking on company PCs can raise a number of concerns for IT managers, from productivity and bandwidth loss to risks of inbound malware to information leakage.

The firm's security division claims to have uncovered a number of scams, phishing schemes, profile hijacks and various other malicious activities on MySpace.

Last Autumn, FaceTime's director of malware research, Christopher Boyd uncovered a MySpace hijack scheme, where MySpace Music pages were hacked using a transparent overlay that, when clicked, redirected the visitor to spyware and fake security utility installs.

FaceTime says that the MySpace granular control enhancement builds on USG's support for more than 20,000 Facebook widgets - a feature the company announced back in April.

USG is also billed as supporting similar controls on other social networking sites including Bebo, Friendster and LinkedIn.

* These topics and others will be discussed at an upcoming Infosecurity Magazine Webinar, which takes place at 10am (UK time) on Wednesday, July 2.

Details of the event, which features FaceTime's Nick Sears and veteran IT security author and lecturer Ben Chai, can be found here:
http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/webinars/securetapping.html

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