Blue Coat Introduces New Data Loss Prevention Appliances To Ease Deployment And Operational Complexity Of DLP

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (BUSINESS WIRE). Blue Coat Systems, Inc., the technology leader in Application Delivery Networking, today introduced the Blue Coat Data Loss Prevention (DLP) family of appliances that provides 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.

"Regulatory compliance, in addition to the high cost of responding to information leaks, is driving more and more companies to adopt data-protection solutions," said Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Nemertes senior vice president and founding partner. "However, many companies quickly discover that the cost and complexity of DLP solutions, added to the organizational and cultural challenges introduced by DLP, can lead to abandoned products or user backlash. Successful DLP projects are incremental in nature - they start off with a narrow set of well defined goals and build on success. In evaluating DLP solutions, companies should look for ease of use and flexible rules that support an incremental deployment."

The Blue Coat DLP appliances integrate data loss protection for traffic on the network, including email 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 provides security administrators with an intuitive dashboard for easy-to-understand configuration and management, simplifying the process of analyzing and fine tuning policies.

Blue Coat 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. In contrast, traditional DLP solutions 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 Blue Coat DLP appliance provides fast and accurate assessments of structured and unstructured data with fewer false positives.
    * Language Independence: Out of the box, the Blue Coat 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 Blue Coat DLP appliance can access a broad range of file types, including archives.The new DLP appliances integrate with the Blue Coat ProxySG appliances using the secure ICAP protocol. Once connected, the ProxySG appliance enables the DLP appliance to inspect SSL-encrypted traffic and serve as the enforcement point to block, forward or encrypt sensitive information. ProxySG 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 combines 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, such as Webmail, and prevents endpoints infected with malicious software from sending sensitive data and confidential information to "phone-home" websites.

"The Blue Coat DLP appliances provide a no compromise approach to data loss protection that supports enterprise-class DLP functionality in an easy-to-deploy solution," said Carrie Oakes, vice president product marketing, Blue Coat Systems. "By extending the Blue Coat Secure Web Gateway solution to include our new DLP appliances, we now provide our customers with layered, comprehensive security that prevents malicious content from entering the network and sensitive content from leaving the network." 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.