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Content Filtering with Blue Coat

URL filtering, or the ability to control access to Web sites, is critical to minimizing an organization’s business risk. Inappropriate Web surfing can lead to decreased worker productivity and the introduction of viruses. Both situations can result in considerable financial costs for any company. Other security breaches occur through inappropriate Web use such as the loss of intellectual property and other proprietary information. Unsanctioned Web-based applications can also consume large amounts of network bandwidth and the viewing of adult content sites by employees can lead to costly lawsuits.

Components of Enterprise Content Filtering

Extending the Reach of URL Filtering
How can you ensure greater performance, deep content inspection and positive user identification from your URL filtering strategy? The answer lies in using the right URL filtering platform that provides the capabilities needed to monitor and control a user’s dynamic Web-based activities.

Comprehensive security controls and deeper content inspection capabilities go beyond a typical general- purpose server deployment of URL filtering. In the past, software-based proxy servers provided sufficient levels of Web control. However, administrators are feeling the pain as they attempt to patch and maintain software-based proxies in the face of relentless security threats and highly saturated Web environments that demand increased performance. Customers are recognizing that the solution to extending the value of URL filtering is through a proxy appliance.

A proxy appliance provides abundant policy controls wrapped in performance-based hardware and a custom operating system to give today’s organizations visibility and control over their employee’s Web communications. Combined with comprehensive enterprise policy controls, the Blue Coat ProxySG provides all the necessary components for effective content filtering.

Effectively controlling spyware, P2P, or IM requires deep content inspection and a high level of system performance. Controlling spyware, for example, not only requires URL filtering but also the ability to recognize and block “drive-by” installers, scan for known spyware signatures and detect spyware communication attempts. A URL filtering list alone cannot provide this level of content inspection to all instances of spyware activity. The Blue Coat solution combines a high-performance operating system on custom hardware, unique policy architecture with deep content inspection and an integrated proxy cache that stores commonly accessed content. The Blue Coat solution extends the reach of URL filtering with the performance that organizations require.

Some additional examples where Extended Policies for the ProxySG enrich URL filtering are listed here:

For a comparison of the Enterprise Control features available when running URL filtering on the ProxySG versus standalone, refer to the URL Filtering “On-Proxy” Comparison table by Clicking Here.

The "On-Proxy" Solution

The following sections explain each component of the Blue Coat Content Filtering solution in greater detail

URL Filtering Vendor Options
URL filtering deployed on a ProxySG (On-Proxy) integrates the scalability, performance, and protection of award-winning secure proxy appliances with comprehensive URL databases from the following vendors:

Already Have a URL Filtering Vendor?
If you’ve already deployed a URL filtering database on another platform and implemented a reporting scheme, it’s easy to transfer your existing license to a Blue Coat ProxySG. Simply select your vendor from the Blue Coat management console drop-down list, enter your existing license key and password to request a download of your vendor’s database to the ProxySG appliance.

To learn more about transferring your existing URL Filtering license to a Blue Coat ProxySG and configuring logs for reporting, click on your filtering vendor here:

Want to try out the new Blue Coat WebFilter database? Click here to download a free 60-day evaluation copy. Interested in Blue Coat Reporter, Click here for more information.

ProxySG - High Performance Platform for URL Filtering
As Web use increases for an enterprise, administrators find that users complain about slow response times when attempting access to URLs. Many URL filtering implementations are deployed on PC or UNIX servers, which do a poor job of responding quickly to the “real-time” demands of URL requests. Combined with expanding policy controls, this results in end-user delays. In reality, it’s not the network running more slowly; it’s a poor architectural implementation of URL filtering.

The Blue Coat ProxySG is a purpose-built operating system designed specifically around Web objects. By integrating leading “On-Proxy” URL databases Blue Coat enables enterprises to reap the rewards of the fastest, most secure, and scalable Web filtering solution in the industry.

Implementing a URL filtering on-proxy architecture will result in a 10-times performance improvement by incorporating object pipelining and caching of URL requests. The ProxySG provides unique technology that allows an organization of any size to achieve spectacular performance gains:

Object Pipelining Dramatically Speeds Up Web Requests
URL filtering deployed on traditional server technology relies on a “one-at-a-time” delivery of Web objects. Typically when a user makes a Web request, the browser will request Web objects from the web server in a serial fashion, which takes time. In contrast, the ProxySG utilizes object-pipelining technology to request multiple Web objects in parallel; dramatically shortening the download time of Web pages after the URL filtering decision has been made.

Advanced Web Caching Serves Up Repetitive Content
While object pipelining improves Web traffic performance on the initial request, there is an opportunity for even greater performance gains. On average, 30-50% of Web objects requests are duplicates. By implementing a URL filtering on-proxy architecture with caching, you can eliminate the need to repeatedly download Web objects from the Internet. This enables Web pages to load immediately because objects are being served from the local cache memory of the Proxy SG .

Deep Content Inspection
All URL requests are not the same. For example, some Web requests are for music, streaming news, and Internet radio. A URL filtering list will typically include a category for streaming media sites that contains many hundreds of streaming sites.

However, the list is not completely effective because the Streaming Category only contains known sites with an emphasis on streaming, the URL filtering list does not have the ability to natively recognize streaming traffic by its protocol. A URL filtering list alone will block some, but not all, of the streaming sites. The ability to recognize streaming media through protocol inspection is required to ensure policy coverage.

Image searches have also become a popular path around URL lists for adult content viewing, rendering the most important objective of URL filtering futile. ProxySG provides the ability to always enforce SafeSearch mode with Image Search engines (i.e. Yahoo! and Google) no matter what the user desires.

Once a protocol is identified, complex and global access policies can be deployed with ease on the ProxySG. Using the integrated Visual Policy Manager, security administrators can quickly develop and deploy resilient Web filtering policies on an enterprise-wide basis. At the core of the Blue Coat Content Filtering solution are Enterprise Policy Controls – extending the functionality of standalone URL filtering by adding content inspection and native proxy functionality for the most popular Web protocols.


The Blue Coat Visual Policy Manager enables a breadth of content filtering
solutions addressing general to specific customer requirements.

User Identification and Reporting
Associating the exact user with Web browsing behavior is a key requirement for most enterprise operations. Customers need to positively identify a user who has accessed or has attempted to access a given Web site, download material from the Internet or sent information out of the organization. URL filtering does not have the capability to directly authenticate users and instead relies on mapping client IP addresses to authentication servers for user identification. Positive identification of a user is more difficult because IP addresses change frequently in DHCP environments and positive identification behind NAT’ed environments is also inaccurate.

Visibility is the key to managing employee Web communications in the enterprise. Blue Coat provides the tools needed to log and track user interactions over the Internet and across corporate boundaries. The first step to positive user identification is to utilize a company’s existing authentication system. The Blue Coat ProxySG supports local password files, NTLM, LDAP (Active Directory, eDirectory, SunOne), RADIUS, Netegrity Siteminder and certificates for authentication. ProxySG also supports transparent state authentication allowing positive identification in cases of user anonymity.

Once authenticated, a user can be positively identified and tracked for all Web activity. Policies can be defined that enables sophisticated security triggers based on individual users, groups of users, time of day, location, protocol, user agent, content type and other attributes. Log files can track user or department Web activity for attempted Web access, IM conversations, P2P access, Spyware infections, streaming media downloads, and so on.

For more information about using Blue Coat Reporter click here.

ProxySG – The Complete Content Filtering Solution
The proxy appliance addresses the scalability and security needs of the enterprise as a dedicated hardware platform that integrates performance, deep content inspection and granular policy controls with generally available URL filtering lists from popular vendors. Implementing a URL filtering list “on-proxy” results in a 10X performance improvement by utilizing object-pipelining technology and content caching.

Also, by natively identifying Web content as it enters the network, the proxy appliance takes over where URL filtering leaves off, examining Web content and applying policy where required to block Web requests coming in their varied forms (ie.streaming, IM, P2P, etc.) and utilizing local authentication schemes to accurately identify a user.

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