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JDL Technologies and Blue Coat Web Security

Blue Coat Optimizes and Protects
Blue Coat provides a family of intelligent appliances that give IT organizations the ability to effectively:

  1. Accelerate delivery of business applications.
  2. Secure Web communications

Blue Coat provides visibility and very granular control over performance and security. Policies can be set based on who, what, where, when and how users and applications communicate with each other. All of this functionality is complemented by powerful management and reporting tools. JDL assists Blue Coat as an integration partner by deploying and configuring a solution that is fit to the business or education enterprise.

1. Application Acceleration: The Network Value Equation
To quantify the discussion between IT and senior management about the value of IT Ashton, Relative Value of IT
Metzler & Associates recently asked approximately 200 IT professionals to identify where their company’s business and functional management saw value from the IT function. As shown in Figure 1, the response to that question was quite dramatic and underscores the need for IT organizations to be able to relate the value of the IT infrastructure to the company’s key applications.
Source: Ashton, Metzler & Associates

To ensure appropriate application performance, IT organizations have begun to deploy network and application functions that accomplish one or more of the following tasks:

  • Reduce the amount of data that is sent over the WAN.
  • Prioritize traffic that is business critical and delay sensitive.
  • Ensure that the WAN link is never idle if there is data to send.
  • Reduce the number of round trips or application turns that are necessary for a given transaction.
  • Offload intensive computational tasks from client systems and servers.

2. Secure Web Gateway and the Protection of Enterprise Resources
To successfully support the emerging application delivery model, IT organizations must ensure both application performance demanded by top management and WAN security to provide:

  • The appropriate performance of applications as seen by remote workers
  • That viruses, worms, trojans and spyware are not allowed onto the branch or the remote office networks
  • That employees are not making inappropriate use of the Internet

Blue Coat is #1 in Both Secure Content and Application Delivery Functionality
Blue Coat secures Web communications and accelerates business applications across the Blue Coat Proxy SG distributed enterprise. Blue Coat’s family of appliances and client-based solutions – deployed in branch offices, Internet gateways, end points and data centers – provide intelligent points of policy-based control enabling IT organizations to optimize security and accelerate performance for all users and applications. Blue Coat has installed more than 8,000 customers worldwide and is ranked #1 by IDC in the Secure Content and Application Delivery. Blue Coat is positioned in the Leader’s Quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and Strong Performer position in Forrester’s review of security performers.

Product Example
The Blue Coat ProxySG 210 provides an affordable appliance solution for remote offices where direct Internet access requires accelerated performance of business applications and granular control of web communications. At the edge of an organization’s application delivery infrastructure, the ProxySG 210 provides controlled acceleration of business applications across the globally-distributed enterprise.

Leveraging Blue Coat’s MACH5 technology, users located at remote locations enjoy the same LAN-like performance and user experience as those located at headquarters or the data center. The ProxySG 210 platform also provides effective control of the enterprise’s Internet traffic, including gateway protection from web-based threats such as spyware, malicious mobile cod and phishing attacks.
Overview of Blue Coat Services

Acceleration

Bandwidth Management
Assign priority and network resources based on port, device, applications or content to reflect corporate policies

Protocol Optimization
Improve inefficient protocols by making them more tolerant to higher latencies

Byte Caching
Cache repetitive traffic found in the byte stream and serve it locally to reduce WAN traffic

Object Caching
Store files, videos and Web content locally, providing LAN-like performance over WAN

Compression
Inline compression can reduce predictable patterns even on the first pass

MACH5 Acceleration Client
SG Client software extends MACH5 acceleration capabilities to remote

Control – Proxy Services

Proxy support for multiple protocols

  • HTTP, CIFS, SSL, FTP, MAPI, P2P, MMS,
    RTSP, QuickTime, TCP-Tunnel, DNS
  • Bandwidth management on all proxy services
  • SSL Termination & Proxy (forward and reverse)
  • Control encrypted traffic for all users and applications inside & outside the enterprise

Content Filtering and Security

  • On-proxy support of leading URL lists, popular regional lists, custom lists, or custom categories
  • Strip and replace Web content P2P file sharing controls
  • Log and block P2P traffic
  • Control BitTorrent, eDonkey, Gnutella, and FastTrack

Web virus scanning

  • ProxyAV integration with ProxySG
  • Choice of anti-virus engines

IM Logging and Controls

  • MSN, Yahoo!, AOL Messengers
  • Method level control settings

Spyware Prevention and Control

  • Block spyware and malware
  • Control pop-ups and phishing scams

Streaming controls

  • MS, Real, QuickTime
  • Stream splitting & caching

Performance & Reliability — SGOS

Platform highlights:

  • Secure object-based operating system with small footprint
  • High-speed caching with advanced object pipelining and adaptive refresh
  • Built-in pass-through network card, compression services, bandwidth management and SSL off loading

Network functionality including:

  • Active/Active bridging support using virtual IP addressing for failover and remote installations
  • Routing configurations for gateway, route tables, RIP, DNS and WCCP
  • Health checks performed on a forwarding host or external servers to verify status and availability of device
  • 19” Rack mountable (with kit) or portable use Integrated support services
  • View & submit service requests via the Blue Coat management interface
  • Send snapshots (trace files) to Blue Coat Support Services for faster resolution

Manageability —
Policy Processing Engine

Authentication

  • Utilize a company’s existing authentication source for integrated SSO, including local password files, NTLM, LDAP (Active Directory, eDirectory, SunOne), CA eTrust SiteMinder, Microsoft Kerberos, Oracle Access Manager, RADIUS and certificates
  • Multi-realm authentication sequencing
  • Forms-based authentication support

Powerful management interface

  • Web-based management interface
  • Optional command line interface
  • Alerting via SNMP, SMTP and logging administrative events

Comprehensive policy definitions

  • Graphical Visual Policy Manager with layered policy definitions
  • Definable triggers and actions for policy definition

Content Policy Language (CPL)

  • Create custom text-based policies to address unique policy requirements
  • Built-in text editor for CPL allows sample code to be copied and pasted from Blue Coat TechBriefs or Support Services advisories

Extended Management with Director

  • Distribute, backup, restore policy files for multiple Blue Coat ProxySG appliances
  • Manage policy by device, group, or region
  • Job scheduling/job status reporting

Management & Control of SG Clients

  • Configure, provision and maintain global deployment of SG Clients
  • Accelerate applications by user
  • Upgrade client versions seamlessly with auto version detection and update

JDL is a Blue Coat Premier Partner

Adapted from web and white paper content published by Blue Coat.
www.BlueCoat.com