The combined solution will empower large enterprises to easily manage, secure and enforce the compliant use of critical enterprise Web 2.0 applications, social networking, instant messaging and other collaborative tools over their networks.

"Today employees are communicating and sharing information online from many locations, at all hours of the day," said John Grady, senior research analyst, Security Products and Services, IDC. "This new social landscape has contributed to a massive growth in data traffic volumes that is challenging IT departments to find solutions that can scale to meet these demands while ensuring stringent protection and management oversight - all without having to resort to a simple 'block everything' policy. The Crossbeam-Actiance partnership offers a solution for tightly managing Internet-based communication on a consolidated platform that is designed to provision security in high-performance network environments."

Actiance's USG is the only secure web gateway to combine feature and content controls of social networks with the monitoring, management and security of Web 2.0 applications. It provides granular control of websites and applications as well as content posted to blogs, wikis, webmail and social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. With USG, content posted to these social networks can be moderated, monitored and logged - reducing outbound data leakage and enforcing compliance with regulatory and legal discovery, and corporate policy requirements.

"There is an enormous market opportunity for our joint solution, especially within industries such as financial services, where there is a need to ensure regulatory and corporate compliance for all communications," said Kailash Ambwani, president and CEO of Actiance. "Crossbeam is the de facto standard when it comes to successfully deploying security within large, performance-driven environments, making this partnership a strategic choice for Actiance in meeting our customers' needs."

The X-Series allows organizations to consolidate security appliances and related network devices onto a single high-performance chassis, slashing total cost of ownership by as much as 70 percent when compared to other options and approaches on the market today. This enables customers to take full advantage of the security protection and control offered by Actiance on a platform that can easily scale to network demand, while also reducing the cost and complexity of security management.

"Actiance is an important new addition to Crossbeam's portfolio of best-of-breed security partners, offering a unified compliance and web security platform that provides control over social networking and other real-time communications," said Michael Ruffolo, president and CEO of Crossbeam. "It is through our partnerships with the industry's leading security providers that Crossbeam can uniquely offer customers the freedom to deploy security exactly as they require, while also meeting key performance and cost objectives that can support their business."