Peace, love and free URL filtering

Every self-respecting marketing person would dress up like a hippie for the sake of a marketing promotion, right? Well, Sarah Carter and I would, anyway.

 

You see, here at FaceTime, we’re all about peace, love and free URL filtering. Okay, yes, it’s a promotion we’ve been running for the past couple of months, but we really do feel the love when it comes to helping our customers manage their budgets by eliminating URL filtering renewal fees. Rumor has it there will be a group of protesters at the RSA Conference next week speaking out against those fees so be sure to stop by the FaceTime booth #2339 and check it out. And don’t forget to wear your tie dye.

 

Seriously, all this commotion and protesting, but we really don’t have anything against URL filtering. Everyone needs URL filtering, it’s just that it’s not enough when it comes to managing the New Internet. A much more granular level of application control is required when it comes to securing and managing Web 2.0 including social networking, multimedia, virtual worlds, VoIP … and the list goes on.

 

So we’ve been having a lot of fun with our No URL Filtering Fees promotion in our Larissa and Sarah Show episodes. NetworkWorld even called our YouTube videos quirky. We’ll take that as a compliment.

 

Peace out. 

 

Securing Web 2.0: We All Like To Jump On the Next New Thing

When something works others will adopt it. It’s true whether you are talking about TV reality shows, green products or IT security.  This was evident at the Gartner IT Security Summit  that I attended last week, where there were several references in the keynotes and breakout sessions to the trend toward end user adoption of collaborative applications such as Facebook and other Web 2.0 apps.  

 

The current catch phrases are based on the premise that the Internet has changed. Some call it the “Consumerization of IT,” some call it Enterprise 2.0 – and I believe I even heard it called “People-Based Computing.” (PBC)

 

No matter what you call it, IT security administrators must make a judgment call about the usefulness of these new real-time Internet tools and whether or not to spend money on security and management solutions. Are employees really going to use these tools to do business? Or are they virtually hanging out with friend on MySpace during work hours? And what if MySpace becomes Facebook, or Second Life, and then Twitter or Pownce or a widget… or whatever else the latest Web 2.0 application is?

 

The lines between work and personal time are blurring more than ever, and IT is continually challenged with “the next new thing.” The new Internet will create new strategic issues to sort out over the next few years. Will a SaaS model for security be considered?  How will virtualization impact security deployments?  These were the types of issues that were raised and debated over the three days.  All said, a solid conference that offered a combination of actionable recommendations and thought-provoking considerations.

 

By the way, Google started its keynote at the Gartner IT Security Summit with a message about collaborative applications, and I was pleased (and proud, I must admit) to see their reference to our very own Chris Boyd as a contributor to their security efforts.