CIOIN

Blue Coat Systems, has developed a Web security solution which allows small and medium businesses to use social networking sites for official business activities, but with access restrictions to recreation content.

Examples of recreation content are on-line games, gambling, pornography and videos. Most of these are offered in popular social networking media like Facebook.

"The shift in business to the Web has exposed small and large businesses alike to greater risk, yet smaller businesses often lack the financial and IT resources to protect their users, making them more vulnerable to rapidly evolving Web-based threats," said Lawrence Orans, research director at Gartner.

In a recent briefing with Computerworld Philippines Jonathan Andresen, director of Product Marketing, Asia Pacific, Blue Coat Systems, Inc. reported that cybercriminals are moving down the business chain from larger enterprises to smaller (and medium-sized) businesses (SMB) that have less formal policies and systems in place.

A Blue Coat white paper titled "Protecting the Mid-sizes Business: New security requirements and possibilities" seconded, "Cybercriminals will also target the weakest link in the organization, which has increasingly become remote workers. To save time and money, many road warriors access the Internet directly on a hotel or airport wireless network instead of using their secure VPN connection or cellular data dongle."

It continued, "This opens up an easier path for malware infection. In fact, cybercriminals attempt to breach hotel networks more than any other, including financial services and retail networks."

Andresen said cybercriminals are using a lot of lures, e.g. fake anti-virus, updates of video, fake video codec, drive-by ads (also known as malvertising), etc. "Cybercriminals follow the users' trend which is from traditional communication Websites to new ones like Facebook...as users migrate to the social network media platform, cybercriminals are also moving over there. Nowadays, 90% legitimate sites have become unwitting hosts. Cybercriminals go where there are a lot of traffic."

COMPREHENSIVE WEB SECURITY

Blue Coat has also released two security software that provide enterprise-class protection just for the SMBs. Particularly, this will enable SMBs in the Philippines, in which at least 50% have fallen victim to cybercrime, to protect their businesses against the latest Web-based threats.

Andresen discussed how their solutions are able to help local SMBs with limited budget and resources combat the latest web-based threats brought about by the increase in social networking at the work place.

This is the first time Blue Coat has released a comprehensive security solution just for SMBs.

According to recent studies by German unified threat management (UTM) firm Astaro Corporation, at least 50% of SMBs in Philippines have fallen victim to cybercrime. With the large number of SMBs in the Philippines combined with a general lack of awareness and resources to protect their businesses, cybercriminals are focusing their attention on SMBs. About 51% of SMBs in the Philippines do not have a sound security system and most often the information that drives their business is not protected, according to a Symantec study.

Early this April, Blue Coat introduced the Blue Coat ProxyOne appliance which "brings the same enterprise-class Web security used by 88 percent of the Fortune Global 500 to organizations that require a low-touch solution at an affordable price point."

The Blue Coat ProxyOne appliance integrates Web filtering, inline malware and anti-virus scanning and on-box reporting to enable safer use of Web 2.0 applications.

Andresen explained that with inline malware and anti-virus scanning at the Web gateway, ProxyOne appliances block malware executables before they get on the network. He said "utilizing advanced caching technologies, ProxyOne appliances speed the scanning process with a 'scan once, serve many' model, so businesses don't have to compromise performance for security."

Philippine SMBs can either buy the ProxyOne appliance or out source to access the Blue Coat Cloud Service, a scalable Internet-delivered service that leverages proven Blue Coat technology and the company's collaborative WebPulse community of more than 70 million users.

The first subscription module for the Blue Coat Cloud Service is the Web Security Module that enables organizations of any size to provide Web security that follows employees from cubicle to home to café to hotel.