FaceTime (News - Alert) Communications reportedly announced support for the Squid proxy server in its secure Web gateway, Unified Security Gateway (News - Alert) v 3.1. This helps organizations utilizing Squid proxies to track and administer content added from the corporate network to blogs, wikis, webmail and social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook (News - Alert) and YouTube.

This helps in minimizing data seepage and improves adherence to corporate policy standards and legal discovery requirements. It also promoted adherence to regulations issued by groups like the FINRA that are anxious about sensitive content being added to social networks.

The USG from the company is the first secure Web gateway to amalgamate content monitoring, management and logging of social networking, instant messaging and Unified Communications (News - Alert), with URL filtering, malware and Web antivirus protection.

FaceTime announced support for Blue Coat (News - Alert) proxy servers in September. USG also comprises an application signature database of over 4,000 applications of interest to IT managers. The database has been built by FaceTime’s Security Lab and today is the most extensive available. It is managed by FaceTime's security research team who are fully committed to collecting, analyzing, identifying threats and managing real-time and Web 2.0 application.

Squid is one of the most popularly used caching proxy servers and props up a broad range of Web protocols. It is popular partially because it is free, but also because it works well with a number of operating systems and offers great performance. USG 3.1 can be either integrated with a Web/FTP proxy server, like Blue Coat or Squid, using an ICAP-based connector, or installed in simple pass-by mode in a plug and play deployment which needs no change to current network configurations.

"Since a number of networks already have Squid proxy servers in place, this release will make it even easier to adopt our USG solution, which will prevent sensitive conversations and data leaking out over Twitter, Facebook, IM and other channels,” Nishant Jadhav, director of product management for FaceTime said. “IT managers can now plug USG 3.1 into any network equipped with a free Squid proxy server and immediately monitor, control and filter Web 2.0 conversations."

Corporations, financial institutions, government agencies, schools, and others are taking up Web 2.0 platforms for internal communications and to communicate with partners and customers. Conventional security solutions are often not able to resolve the risks related to these new collaborative applications. USG 3.1 satisfies that requirement by delivering fundamental control of the Web sites and applications and also the matter added to blogs, wikis, webmail and social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

USG 3.1 is available immediately through FaceTime's authorized partners for $9,200.

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