The Secure Web Gateway market is livening up. On Monday, San Diego based Websense announced
Version 7.7 of Websense Triton and their Websense Secure Web Gateway. They state that their Websense Triton
solution is the first to provide data-aware defenses necessary to prevent the
advanced attacks that lead to data theft.
Websense also announced that the 7.7 release contains 10 new
advanced malware and data theft advances, including spear phishing protection
with cloud sandboxing, and a new forensic reporting dashboard with in-depth
security intelligence.
These new defenses also include detecting criminal encrypted uploads; advanced
malware payloads and command-and-control recognition; optical character
recognition (OCR) of text within images for data-in-motion; drip (stateful) DLP
detection; password file theft detection; and geolocation awareness. These are powered by Websense’s
real-time inline ACE (Advanced Classification Engine) security engine and
Websense’s imbedded Data Loss Prevention (DLP) engine.
.
Spear phishing protection with cloud sandboxing is part of
the arsenal. Websense's cloud
sandboxing capability identifies suspicious links in emails for real time
analysis. When email recipients click on
an embedded URL, Websense analyzes the website content and browser code in real
time, in a cloud environment, to ensure safety in any location at any time.
The Websense TRITON Advanced Malware Threat dashboard profiles security incidents, provides in-depth
forensics, and data theft capture. With
severity levels and the ability to export incidents to SIEM solutions, Websense
users know who was attacked, how the attacks function, where those
communications were being sent, and what data was targeted.
Blue Coat Systems is promoting that their Unified
Web Security Solution, combining cloud services and on-premise appliances delivers
the “No Boundaries, Always On protection”.
The cornerstone of their protection, their Secure Web Gateway
appliance(s) (ProxySG) and their real-time WebPulse technology, a defense that
utilizes the information provided by 75 million users.
Historically, Blue
Coat has been an appliance-focused company.
They are now more heavily promoting their hybrid and cloud technology,
due in large part to San Jose, CA based Zscaler. Blue Coat introduced their Unified Web Security Solution
in March and are now more heavily promoting their cloud service, along with a 30-day
trial.
According to the Gartner “Market Share: Security Software,
Worldwide, 2011 Report (March 29, 2012), Inc., Blue Coat is the leader with 17
percent of the $1.95 billion Secure Web Gateway market. This combines both appliances and software
solutions. In the appliance segment of
the market, Blue Coat has about 44 percent of the market, leading its
closest competitor by more than 30 percentage points.
Zscaler is the cloud-based canon in the mix. Actually, they use a jet in their imagery. Zscaler offers a pure cloud based solution. They dislike hardware and consider Capex (Capital expenditure) to be a four letter word. They’re the newcomer to the Leader’s
portion of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Secure Web Gateways. Gartner considers them the Leader with
respect to Completeness of Vision. Cisco
is given credit for having the best Ability to Execute, with Blue Coat and
Websense sandwiched between the two. Mc.Afee is off to the left in the Leader portion of the Magic Quadrant.
The Zscaler message –
“Attention all Blue Coat Customers, if
you’re the victim of underperforming
proxies lacking sufficient security or if you have lost budget support due to the high cost of multiple appliances,
call the Zscaler Security Help Line.” They
offer five flavors of cloud based web security suites
http://www.zscaler.com/products_web_security.html
Add on’s include email protection,
mobile protection, and Data Loss Prevention (DLP).
One of their promotions has been to offer their solution free
for six months to prospects. The focus
being on Blue Coat customers.
So where will this play out?
Blue Coat is 20% leaner and meaner, following their purchase by equity
investment firm Thoma Bravo. They have a
hybrid solution. They have a cloud
solution. They haven’t done a great job
of promoting these. They have a leading
WAN solution but that merits a separate discussion.
It should be an interesting summer for these companies.
Websense has upgraded their product line. Their solutions have been available as
appliances, SaaS, software, and a Hybrid. Like
Zscaler, they offer email security, as well. This is a hole in the Blue Coat product line.
Zscaler has their sight on Blue Coat, almost
exclusively. They want share. They have a reputation for playing a bit loose regarding number of data centers around the world. But, hey! It's marketing. Blue Coat and Websense go
after each other. McAfee and Cisco, the
other two companies in the Leaders portion of the quadrant, are relatively
quiet in comparison. Not quite in the
shadows – Barracuda Networks, whose strategy tends to be to deliver the low
cost solution. Also, Palo Alto Networks. Palo Alto Networks’ Next Generation Firewall provides filtering
and like Websense, automated sandbox analysis of suspicious files. They also provide limited DLP protection, as
well. They are now starting to move forward on the plans to go public.
Application control is a topic for another blog.
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