Blue Coat
Blue Coat provides a family of intelligent appliances, along with a suite of powerful software applications, that work together to give IT organizations the ability to effectively control security and performance for all users and applications.
Blue Coat appliances are available in a broad range of configurations and are typically deployed in enterprise branch offices, Internet gateways, end points, and data centers – as well as in global service provider organizations. The appliances provide intelligent points of control to secure Web communications and accelerate delivery of business applications. Just as important, Blue Coat gives IT organizations visibility and very granular control over security and performance, so that policies can set based on who, what, where, when, and how users and applications communicate with each other.
Blue Coat appliances are powered by SGOS, a lightweight, purpose-built operating system designed to deliver optimum performance and unsurpassed security in terms of both user-application communications and administrative control.
All of this functionality is complemented by powerful management and reporting tools that make it fast and easy to deploy, configure, and administer Blue Coat appliances and technology throughout the distributed enterprise.
The Blue Coat SG, a secure proxy appliance,provides the visibility and high-performance needed to review, control, and log Web-based communications across the entire enterprise. Blue Coat appliances function as proxies between users and applications for all inbound and outbound communication sessions. As such, the appliances become a termination point – and therefore an extremely effective control point - between users and applications.The Blue Coat SG enables an enterprise to achieve benefits such as:
- Identify, manage and log the most popular Web protocols, user agents, methods, etc. that traverse the firewall
- Define comprehensive use policies that can be applied to all enterprise users, individual users or groups
- Authenticate and authorize user access when necessary
- Filter URLs using vendor databases and an administrator’s custom category definitions
- Scan Web-based email for viruses and malicious mobile code in real time
Organizations can use Blue Coat as an SSL VPN to implement a scalable and secured web portal by front-ending web applications such as corporate web e-mail and web-based business applications. 40% of Malware attacks now come through the browser. Webmail is particularly efficient at spreading worms, trojans, and viruses. Spyware can be unintentionally downloaded from hundreds of thousands of URLs. Just as organizations benefit from placing AV on MS Exchange servers and other SMTP devices, Web-gateway-based virus scanning can substantially improve network security.
Adding AV scanning at the gateway helps with:
- Defense in depth (using a different AV engine at the gateway than on the desktops) reduces risk of damage from new viruses and malware attacks.
- A single appliance can be more reliably updated than thousands of PCs.
- Blue Coat AV at the gateway with heuristic Trojan detection provides incremental protection against unknown spyware.
- New root-kit malware is very difficult to remove from PCs, so gateway prevention becomes even more important.