Blue Coat ProxyOne Appliance

ProxyOne is designed to present mid-sized businesses with easy-to-deploy, enterprise-level web security. It incorporates content-caching technology for improved scanning performance and will extend protection to remote workers via Blue Coat's ProxyClient software.

This 1U rack system comes with a quad-core Xeon processor, 18GB of memory, two mirrored 1TB hard disks and 2 hot-plug power supplies. It contains a Cavium Nitrox hardware accelerator, while a hardware bypass switch means an appliance failure won't halt your web access.

Prices start at £5,600, which incorporates 24/7 support for 100 users, one-year warranty, licences and security updates. This makes it expensive for small firms, but costs decrease because the user count goes up, with a 3-year subscription for two,000 users equating to around £11 per user yearly.

The appliance supports two deployment methods and will be placed to at least one side of the network, where it functions as an explicit proxy. This requires all client systems at the LAN to be reconfigured to make use of it, and this is automated using AD group policies or PAC scripts.

The easier method, which we chose for testing, is to put it in-line between the firewall and LAN. During this mode it functions as a clear gateway and requires no client configuration.

First contact is via a serial port connection to establish management access. We found the six-step process simple - we provided a set IP address, netmask, gateway and first DNS server details, chose an administrator user name and gave it a password.

That's all there's to it, because the appliance downloads updates and virus signatures automatically and starts filtering traffic immediately. Point an online browser on the IP address provided earlier and you'll be presented with easy accessibility to URL filtering, appliance monitoring and configuration and a separate reporting section.

URL filtering comes courtesy of Blue Coat's WebPulse cloud-based service. It is easy to establish as you choose and judge from 74 categories and judge whether to dam or allow them. Spyware, malware, phishing and proxy-avoidance sites are permanently blocked. You'll be able to create a white list of allowed URLs, IP addresses and domains, and a black list where they are going to be blocked whatever the categories chosen.

We found filtering performance to be exemplary. With the games and gambling categories blocked, our attempts to access 50 bingo sites were all rebuffed.

Social networking sites reminiscent of Facebook, Twitter and MySpace can be quickly placed off-limits. We also visited loads of sites known to harbour malware and these were automatically blocked.

A P2P category allowed us to dam access to BitTorrent sites, however the IM category only blocks sites providing these services and is unable to forestall apps together with Windows Live Messenger. Appliances which includes Cyberoam's CR750ia offer IM app controls and feature no user restrictions.

The device-configuration website provides detailed graphs showing all traffic activity. It's also possible to see the cache in action, and we tested its effectiveness by downloading a 20MB file from an external FTP site which initially took 11 minutes. Subsequent downloads took a second as they were retrieved from the cache.

Blue Coat's reporting features appear to have every angle covered. A dashboard provides a range of graphs showing detected malware, potentially infected LAN clients, blocked sites and web browsing activity. quite a number predefined reports are available in so that you can pull up views of user behaviour, security threats and perusing trends. You can too create your personal reports using stored data.

Blue Coat is unquestionably easy to deploy. Smaller companies will find it expensive, but its ability to increase content security and perfect URL filtering to remote workers adds plenty of value.
Dave Mitchell