Proxy Solutions for Visibility and Control of Web Communications

As organizations grow increasingly dependent on the Internet to communicate with customers, partners and employees, the Web browser is fast becoming the universal window into mission-critical communications and information. This has many advantages for the enterprise: Web-based applications and protocols are inexpensive, centrally managed, and easy to deploy and manage for distributed offices.

However these benefits come at a price. When every user on the network has a Web browser, every user also has the means to negatively affect the network infrastructure-whether intentionally or not. Despite their ability to help users communicate more efficiently, evolving applications such as Web browsing, instant messaging (IM), Web-based email, streaming media, and peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing bring numerous risks to the enterprise. These risks include:

• Decreased employee productivity brought about by personal, non-business-related surfing, further increasing the opportunity for unwanted software
• Web-based viral threats brought in by personal web-mail accounts, file transfers and web downloads (intentional or hidden drive-by installations)
• Help desk call escalations due to Spyware infestations also impacting desktop performance and web applications
• Increased legal liability and reduced competitive advantage due to the loss of private or protected information
• Decreased network availability resulting from bandwidth-hogging file-sharing applications, spyware or downloaded viral threats.

At the perimeter of the corporate network, firewalls block access for internal networks. But they are not designed to control internal users from inappropriate Web surfing, opening back doors for viruses through Web based email or instant messaging, prevent spyware, or consuming network bandwidth and storage with P2P file sharing and video streaming.

The solution is to use a proxy device-such as the ProxySG™ series of high performance proxy appliances from Blue Coat Systems-designed specifically to provide visibility and control of all Web communications. Acting on behalf of the user and the application, the ProxySG does not replace existing perimeter security devices; rather, it complements them by giving organizations the ability to control communications in a number of ways that firewalls and other devices can't.