Actiance Secures FMG Support in Microsoft Lync Upgrade

Actiance, enablers of the safe and compliant use of unified communications, collaboration and Web 2.0. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) November 12, 2011 - Reading, UK - Actiance, enablers of the safe and compliant use of unified communications, collaboration and Web 2.0, today announced that FMG Support, the UK's leading incident management and roadside assistance provider, is using Vantage from Actiance to augment security and compliance controls as it upgrades its unified communications to Microsoft Lync.

Microsoft Lync is extremely effective as a unified communications (UC) platform, but it does not natively provide the capabilities to meet the corporate governance best practices that FMG Support follows, nor does it prevent users from using unauthorized public real-time communications. Vantage from Actiance enables FMG Support to set acceptable use policies for each employee, such as what departments can communicate with each other, which applications are approved for use on the enterprise network and what types of information are restricted from leaving the organisation.

Vantage's centralised policy setting mechanism recognises not only Microsoft Lync, but other UC platforms, public instant messaging (IM) services and other Web 2.0 applications, allowing FMG Support to manage its collaborative communications environment with ease.

"Federating will make it easier for us to collaborate and work more closely with our partners, while maintaining a corporate standard of communication, but we can also see that it will open the door to an increased risk of data leakage and malware," says Jamie Shields, IT Professional of FMG Support. "In addition we also wanted the ability to effectively archive conversations made over Microsoft Lync. We have set procedures for any changes to contracts or other legally binding documents, but that doesn't mean that someone might not accidentally say something over Group Chat that might be misconstrued. Actiance gives us the ability to go back to that message months or even years later to review what was actually said and to look at the context of the message."

Vantage provides a comprehensive archive of all exchanges that take place over UC and federated services as well as native public IM services. FMG's policy is that that all business conversations need to be stored securely, however UC's multi-dimensional nature can make the process of archiving, storing and retrieving multi-party chats exponentially more complex.

A simple chat conversation might include numerous participants joining at different times, creating a requirement to understand the context surrounding each participants understanding of these conversations - who entered - and left the conversation at what point during the discussion. Vantage enables FMG Support to understand the context of conversation easily, no matter how long ago it took place. Integrated with Active Directory, Vantage enables FMG Support to map a user's buddy-name to their Active Directory corporate identity, helping to identify individuals to their corporate account.

The fleet management firm has been using secure web gateway product, Unified Security Gateway (USG) from Actiance since 2008. FMG Support initially chose the solution as it provided the ability to archive the transcripts of public IM conversations, a capability that traditional secure web gateway solutions were unable to do.

"Actiance has already proved its platform is more than capable of securing and managing our access to UC and other real-time communications and web 2.0 applications such as Facebook and Twitter," concludes Shields. "As we enter our next phase of UC deployment with Microsoft Lync, it is good to have a partner that understands the fast moving world of communications and the importance to us of ensuring that embracing the latest communication tools doesn't mean losing control."

About Actiance
Actiance enables the safe and productive use of Unified Communications, collaboration and Web 2.0, including blogs and social networking sites. Formerly FaceTime Communications, Actiance's award-winning platforms are used by 9 of the top 10 US banks and more than 1600 organizations globally for the security, management and compliance of unified communications, Web 2.0 and social media channels. Actiance supports all leading social networks, unified communications providers and IM platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter AOL, Google, Yahoo!, Skype, Microsoft, IBM and Cisco

Actiance is headquartered in Belmont, California. For more information visit http://www.actiance.com or call 888-349-3223.

Press Contacts:
Sarah Carter
Actiance
650-631-6452 / (cell) 415-806-9504
scarter ( @ ) actiance dot com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahlouisecarter

Catherine Koo or Amy Robinson
LEWIS PR
619-677-2700
Actiance ( @ ) lewispr dot com

EMEA & APAC Press Contact:
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Marylebone Media Relations
sara ( @ ) marylebone dot co.uk
http://fr.linkedin.com/in/saraclaridge
+44 (0) 20 8133 5572
+44 (0) 7968 626838 (mobile)

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