Blue Coat Systems, Inc. introduced the Blue Coat Data Loss Prevention (DLP) family of appliances that ought to provide comprehensive data loss protection in a single integrated appliance to enable compliance without complexity. With the addition of the DLP appliances to its hybrid Secure Web Gateway solution, Blue Coat now provides protection against both inbound malicious threats and outbound data loss.
The appliances integrate data loss protection for traffic on the network, including E-Mail and Web content, and data at rest in databases or on servers with a unified management system in a single, integrated platform. The unified management system ought to provide security admins with an intuitive dashboard for easy-to-understand configuration and management, simplifying the process of analyzing and fine tuning policies.
According to Blue Coat the new DLP appliances can typically be operational in one day or less, including installation and configuration, policy definition and content fingerprinting, initial monitoring and inspection of traffic, and incident analysis. Traditional DLP solutions ought to require weeks – and even months – to deploy and reach full operation.
To further simplify deployment, Blue Coat DLP appliances enable administrators to configure the most critical functions first and add additional functionality over time. By eliminating the need to configure the full solution at initial deployment, businesses can deploy the appliances on a schedule that is optimized for their business and network environments.
In addition to simplifying deployment and operation, the Blue Coat DLP appliance also provides a number of advanced data loss prevention technologies to protect sensitive, confidential and personal information, including:
- Advanced Fingerprinting: The DLP appliance provides fast and accurate assessments of structured and unstructured data with fewer false positives.
- Language Independence: Out of the box, the DLP appliance supports most common languages, including those that require multi-byte characters. For global enterprises, with a presence in countries such as Japan, Korea or China, support for multi-byte characters is essential for consistent policy enforcement and protection against data loss.
- File Format Independence: With support for over 600 document types, the DLP appliance can access a broad range of file types, including archives.
The new DLP appliances integrate with the Blue Coat Proxy SG appliances using the secure ICAP protocol. Once connected, the Proxy SG appliance enables the DLP appliance to inspect SSL-encrypted traffic and serve as the enforcement point to block, forward or encrypt sensitive information. Proxy SG appliances can also provide a wide variety of authentication information to the DLP appliances so that policies can be enforced on a per user basis.
The new DLP appliances add an additional layer of defense to the Blue Coat Secure Web Gateway solution. The hybrid architecture of the solution ought to combine presence at the corporate Web gateway with a collaborative cloud defense to deliver on-demand security intelligence and immediate protection against evolving and emerging Web-based threats. The integration of the DLP appliances into this solution extends data loss policies to SSL-encrypted traffic and prevents endpoints infected with malicious software from sending sensitive data and confidential information to ‘phone-home’ websites.
Blue Coat DLP appliances are available in three models that support up to 250, 5,000 and 20,000 users, respectively. The appliances will be available on June 30, 2010, with list prices starting at $12,000. (Source: Blue Coat Systems, Inc./GST)