SurfControl Web Filter

High Performance “On-Proxy” URL Filtering Solutions for the Enterprise

Countless Internet-based distractions compete for employee time in the workplace. Non-work related activities including online games, Internet shopping, stock trading, Internet radio, personal Web mail and MP3 downloads lure users away from company work and expose the company to spyware and other viral threats. Now, more that ever, risks and threats originate from inside the network. Organizations need to increase productivity by preventing inappropriate content from being available in the work environment.

The ProxySG and SurfControl enable organizations to manage, secure and accelerate Web-based content. Blue Coat integrates scalability, performance and Web content protection with a high quality URL database. The Blue Coat solution allows organizations to effectively extend URL filtering beyond traditional site blocking through the following components:

• On-Proxy Filtering – A comprehensive database that has organized millions of URLs into common categories that can be selected for blocking access to URLs
• Performance platform – A proxy appliance provides abundant policy controls wrapped in optimized hardware and a custom operating system to give today’s organizations a proven high performance option for gaining visibility and control over their employee’s Web communications.
• Deep Content Inspection – URL filtering is not enough for today’s Internet content challenges. For example, some Web requests are for music, news, and Internet radio. Once a protocol is identified, granular and global access policies can be deployed with ease on the ProxySG. At the core of the Blue Coat Content Filtering solution are Enterprise Policy Controls that extend the functionality of standalone URL filtering by adding content inspection and native proxy functionality for the most popular Web protocols.
• Reporting and User Identification – Associating the exact user with Web browsing behavior is a key requirement for enterprise filtering and reporting. Customers need to positively identify a user who has accessed or has attempted to access a given Web site or download material from the Internet.

ProxySG and SurfControl enable organizations to:

• Achieve up to a 10X performance gain by running the list “on-proxy”
• Leverage URL Filtering for Web content threat protection with unique ProxySG Enterprise Controls
• Simplify installation, management and administration of URL filtering with an appliance solution
• Obtain comprehensive visibility and reporting on Web access throughout the organization
• Conserve bandwidth resources by reducing non-work related Web browsing and downloads
• Improve user productivity by restricting user access to inappropriate Web content
• Implement Web access policies based on any combination of users, groups, time of day, location, network address, user agent, and other attributes to meet unique business requirements
• Enable authentication through existing security infrastructures including LDAP (Active Directory, eDirectory), RADIUS and NTLM
• Utilize the most common policy deployments. Refer to Blue Coat’s TechBrief library at www.bluecoat.com/resources

Documentation:

Download the Blue Coat Proxy ProxySG with Integrated SurfControl Datasheet (PDF).