Speaking in Kuala Lumpur, during a tour of the region, Blue Coat Systems senior product manager, secure Web gateway, Bob Hansmann, said the company's evolving approach to the new global ecosystem of cyber threats and new behaviours is ahead of other companies.
"We have to adopt new ways of managing Internet usage," said Hansmann. "For example, 'crime that is organised' is the term given to the ecosystem of global cyber threats, which has seen an enormous increase of Web-based threats."
He said two-thirds of known malware applications detected in 2008 had increased significantly. "In 2008, about 1.6 million viruses were detected, while phishing was up 585 per cent in first half of 2009. Ninety per cent of Web threats come from trusted websites."
Blue Coat's evolving model comprises a key strategy, said Hansmann. "This is to put protection into the cloud, as the enemy is time, and response must be in milliseconds. If you go to a brand new page, our cloud service downloads the page, analyses it, and then lets you download it to your personal device in less than 100 milliseconds. Note that you take 400 milliseconds to blink your eye, which means our model analyses and allows you to download four Web pages in the blink of an eye."
"In a Web 2.0 world, if you go to bbc.com, the banners and headlines are analysed by our solution before the files are downloaded to your site. On one page, there could be many links to a dozen other external domains," he said.
Hansmann said cyber criminals could create a fake company, and put up fake banner ads on a legitimate site. "Blue Coat will use 16 technologies and its database to verify legitimate companies with legitimate processes."
"A real-time version of Blue Coat's software is available for home use free, called K9, and is part of the company's community service," added Hansmann.
"Visibility, security and acceleration are the stages one of our new clients goes through," said Hansmann. "The first stage, enhanced by our acquisition of Packeteer, helps companies analyse network usage."
"We are moving more and more of security intelligence into the cloud," he said. "This model helps us find new viruses before any other virus company."
"A collaborative defence consists of WAN [wide area network], WebPulse, also consists of new hardware such as ProxySG 9000 and ProxyAV 1400/2400," said Hansmann "These new and enhanced filters along with threat intelligence are updated in the cloud in real time."
"The provider can offer new technologies, updates and fixes without the user needing to do anything," said Hansmann, adding that performance is improved by a factor of five at the gateway.
"In addition, reporting performance has been improved by 12 times, which helps to solve people problems and teach safer behaviour," he said. "With 62 million users on the cloud service with on-demand intelligence and ratings, as well as cloud-connected architecture that offers the best TCO [total cost of ownership] on the market, this helps put the company ahead of other cloud service providers who are relative newcomers into the field."