The Internet gives users access to a wide range of downloadable software and content. While in the past administrators could easily "lock down" desktop systems by removing floppy drives, Internet access lets anyone with a Web browser download an enormous amount of content. This content ranges from valuable business-related information and software to time-wasting games to pirated movies or MP3 files. In order for organizations to give their users the Internet access they need to do their job, without overwhelming the corporate network with potentially dangerous content, its essential for administrators to be able to create and manage policies governing who can download what types of content from the Internet. A proxy server is required to achieve this.

Unfortunately, today's firewalls are not designed to secure against cross-packet or object level threats, such as malicious mobile code viruses. A new layer of content security infrastructure has emerged using proxy server technology that, in combination with the firewall, is optimized to protect networks from content-level threats. 

The Blue Coat Solution 

Blue Coat's Proxy SG range of secure web proxy servers provide a robust and flexible way to manage content-based threats whether they originate from inside or outside the firewall. In addition, they provide the visibility and flexible policy capabilities needed to manage and enforce Enterprise Web security policies. 
With Blue Coat products, security administrators can:

• Block potentially dangerous active content.
  
  
• Strip and replace potentially dangerous active content from web page, while still serving remainder of the web content.
  
  
• Send potentially dangerous active content to an off-box Malicious mobile code antivirus server, based on security policy (e.g. content type, user, destination IP, etc.)
  
  
• Implement granular stripping of active content. For example, strip Visual Basic scripts for all users, but allow ActiveX for certain people.
  
  
• Block specific file extensions and mime-types from specific groups of users.
  
  
• Restrict the use of certain methods for a given user request. For example, a company may determine that only a certain group of employees are allowed to post information to a partner site or accept attachments in web-based email.
  
  
• Restrict upload of information via multi-part forms or web-based email in order to prevent intellectual property from leaving the company.
  
  
• Allow only use of specific browser types due to potential security holes in non-approved browsers. For example, security admins can enforce security policies to only use a specific version of the Internet Explorer browser, with a patch that has fixed certain security vulnerabilities.
  
  
• Limit, or strip and replace what information is available in certain content headers so that information about the corporate network doesn't find its way into the Internet.

Click Here to download the Blue Coat Content Filtering Datasheet