The wonders of the World Wide Web are open to people in the business environment, but unsecured access to the Internet can be dangerous for your company. While businesses are generally alert to the danger of hacker attacks, the fact that employees use e-mail, surf the Web and use file-sharing programs can expose businesses to risk.
As eSecure Distribution Business Unit Manager Francois van Hirtum points out, leaving open unsecured doorways to the Internet exposes business to a legion of threats. "Viruses can be downloaded from infected sites, confidential information can be sent outside the organisation and bandwidth clogged through P2P downloads and illicit video conferencing," says Van Hirtum.
"It`s often all too easy for employees to engage in instant messaging chats where file sharing, voice and video clog bandwidth, lower productivity expose the company to legal liabilities. The bottom line is that unattended Web communications can constitute considerable business risk and financial loss."
Fortunately it is relatively easy for companies to protect themselves from this type of risk with superior security products such as Blue Coat, which keeps good employees from doing bad things on the Internet. Blue Coat high-performance proxy appliances enable companies to see what employees are up to on the Internet as well as to control their behaviour and prevent unauthorised activities.
Van Hirtum is confident that Blue Coat can provide companies with a powerful security and Internet monitoring solution. "With Blue Coat you can filter what Web content is available to employees, control their instant messaging and peer-to-peer activities, block pop-up ads and scan for viruses. It enables flexible policy enforcement right down to the level of the individual user," he says.
Blue Coat`s end-to-end product portfolio includes powerful reporting, policy and configuration management software. Trusted by many of the world`s most influential organisations, Blue Coat has shipped more than 18 000 proxy appliances worldwide.
Although most companies use firewalls to protect their IT systems, the run-of-the-mill inspection-based firewall does not have the ability to enforce powerful, policy-based control over user communications occurring to and from the Internet to "keep the good guys good".
According to one global survey of IT professionals, existing security infrastructures are permeable because of the high rate of Web traffic. The results showed that what is needed is a high-performance solution that can provide total visibility and control of all network users during Web-based communications with zero impact on firewall operations and network bandwidth.
Says Van Hirtum: "The solution must provide application level inspection of HTTP-based communications even as innovation introduces new productivity tools that will have both positive and negative effects for an enterprise.
"Only a secure proxy with an object-handling operating system can offer the framework needed to identify and enforce policies across an entire enterprise with high-speed performance. Blue Coat has been developed with just this purpose in mind. It acts as an intermediary between client and Web server communications to make all Web-based user activities visible and to enforce the company`s network usage policies."
The Blue Coat ProxySG secure proxy appliance enables system administrators to review, control and log Web-based communications across the entire enterprise. The Blue Coat ProxySG enables an enterprise to achieve the following benefits:
* Identify, manage and log the most popular Web protocols, user agents and methods that penetrate the firewall;
* Define comprehensive use policies that can be applied to all enterprise users, individual users or groups;
* Authenticate and authorise user access when necessary;
* Filter URLs using vendor databases and an administrator`s custom category definitions;
* Scan Web-based e-mail for viruses and malicious mobile code in real-time. For more product details, visit the Blue Coat Web site at www.bluecoat.com.
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