Web Gateway Security Solutions from SECURE COMPUTING®

Achieving Web Gateway Security in a Web 2.0 Environment

The Internet has evolved into something much more powerful and useful than it has ever been. The second generation Internet, sometimes referred to as Web 2.0, has eliminated the physical boundaries of the enterprise and has ushered in a new era of social networking. Web gateway security has had to evolve as well, to meet ever-greater threats of Web-based attacks, virus outbreaks, phishing, and other types of sophisticated blended threats.

Traditional firewall and anti-virus solutions are not up to the task of providing web security in the Web 2.0 environment. Because the frequency of attacks has increased to such an incredible magnitude, standard signature-based solutions are able to serve only as a supplementary component of web gateway security, but cannot be the only component. That's simply because signature-based anti-virus and URL filtering solutions are unable by design to stop attacks that are yet unknown. Even if it is only a matter of a few days, or even several hours, between the time the attack is released and it is captured by security vendors and included in signature databases, the losses can mount quickly and hundreds of thousands of computers can be infected in a matter of minutes. Effective web security must use signature-based solutions along with a front-line defense of reputation-based protection. This is the role of Secure Computing's patented TrustedSource™ technology. Forming the foundation of a strong web gateway security front line defense, TrustedSource makes a vital component of Web 2.0 defense by analyzing the reputation of every IP address and sender — and making sure that your web security environment can stop both known and unknown attacks.

Secure Computing's web gateway security platform is built on the Webwasher appliance, which protects enterprises from known and unknown attacks with a combination of a best-of-breed URL filter, anti-malware, anti-virus, and SSL scanner, as well as the Webwasher Content Reporter for immediate network snapshots and customizable reports. Webwasher incorporates global intelligence from TrustedSource, providing real-time reputation scores for URLs, domains, and IPs based on Web page content, images and behavior, and historical information. Another important part of web gateway security, Webwasher's URL filtering goes far beyond other URL filtering solutions. Defining a new standard in URL filtering with the integration of reputation technology with the award-winning SmartFilter® database, the Webwasher URL filter offers dramatically improved filtering accuracy and protection. Intuitive filtering by category prevents a host of attacks. It is well known that certain categories of Web sites, such as pornography, are prone to containing spyware and other types of malware that can infiltrate your system upon viewing.

In addition, most security platforms include a serious gap in coverage by missing the ability to scan encrypted content. Webwasher's SSL traffic scanning facility adds this feature to the web gateway security environment. With few exceptions, almost all SSL encrypted traffic should be inspected. Webwasher allows for customized policy enforcement in this regard. Without SSL scanning, attackers can easily hide malware inside of encrypted content. The Webwasher web gateway security appliance makes this impossible by taking encrypted content, decrypting it and scanning it at the proxy, and then re-encrypting it before it is sent to the client. At no time is decrypted content on the wire.

Of course, the Web gateway solution must include detailed and intuitive enterprise reporting, and Webwasher fits the bill here as well, with the ability to generate detailed and granular reports to meet both internal and external requirements.

Today's Internet is different than it was a few years ago, and Webwasher Web gateway security appliance meets the unique and challenging requirements of the Web 2.0 environment.

For more information on Secure Computing's Web gateway security solutions, please visit our
Web gateway page.