Blue Coat addresses evolving threat landscape

18.04.2011
Blue Coat Systems, Inc. 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."