Blue Coat Systems, Inc. was founded in 1996 in Sunnyvale, California, focusing on proxy
solutions, which are still the basis of its offering today. In 2016 it was acquired by Symantec. Over the
years, the quality of its products has made it the world's leading manufacturer of security solutions
for WAN optimization and gateway protection, as confirmed by independent research firms
such as Gartner, IDC and Forrester.
In recent years, the way businesses exchange information has changed significantly. Today's companies
often do not have firmly defined boundaries within which IT infrastructure and data must be protected,
and large amounts of information are exchanged between geographic locations connected by WAN networks.
As a result, the web browser has become the main resource for accessing information such as e-mail,
business applications and data exchange, allowing employees to work beyond the physical boundaries of
the office.
With the rapid development of web technologies and the shift to the web browser as the central point of
communication and business, a whole range of security threats has emerged that exploit its growing
popularity. Blue Coat solutions enable companies to use the Internet securely as their main resource for
accessing and transferring information, and ensure the continuity and reliability of business
applications.
The Blue Coat security solution installed at the gateway (the central entry and exit point for
Internet traffic from the company network) delivers safe content to users working in a web browser,
stops threats coming from the Internet over various protocols (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, IM, etc.) and increases
employee productivity by filtering web content that is not used for business purposes.
Symantec solutions also offer real-time, reputation-based malware filtering, which helps detect new,
targeted attacks. In addition to web security options, available integrations include Web Isolation,
Symantec Mail Gateway, Symantec DLP, Symantec CASB (CloudSOC), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) and
Symantec Endpoint Protection. Symantec has also introduced the Integrated Cyber Defense eXchange (ICDX)
as a platform for integrating Symantec with partner security solutions.
In the web security space, Symantec offers the following solutions:
- Symantec Web Security Service (Cloud Service) – lets customers deploy web security in the
cloud, or as a hybrid solution combined with the vendor's on-premises solutions. The cloud solution
includes:
- Web Security Service (WSS)
- DLP
- Web Isolation
- Mobile Device Security
- Hosted Reporting Service
- Malware Analysis Service
- Cloud Firewall Service
- Symantec ProxySG and Advanced SG (ASG) – available as appliances or as virtual appliances.
ProxySG provides a modular web security solution to which components can be added as needed. ASG is
an integrated solution that combines ProxySG and Content Analysis System functionality in a single
appliance. ProxySG and ASG use the Internet Content Adaptation Protocol (ICAP) to pass certain
requests to other appliances built for a specific task, such as DLP. With ProxySG and ASG, customers
can analyze their SSL-encrypted web traffic. The following components can also be added to ProxySG
and ASG appliances:
- Symantec Intelligence Services
- Web Isolation
- Encrypted Tap
- Reporter
- DLP
- Management Center
Feel free to contact us for more information on Symantec Blue Coat products – we will be
happy to arrange a presentation or non-binding testing!