Clearswift Boosts Web Content Security

May 9, 2007; 05:52 AM
Content security specialist Clearswift today announced major upgrades to its web content security portfolio as business concern around the threats associated with the growing use of Web 2.0 technologies intensifies.

Today’s launch of upgraded versions of Clearswift’s MIMEsweeper Web Appliance and MIMEsweeper for Web software follows recent research which showed that while organizations rated the loss of confidential information as the second most important security issue they face, more than one third (35.4 per cent) of organizations didn’t monitor employees’ use of the internet and almost half (48.3 per cent) didn’t know whether they’d lost confidential information via Web 2.0 social media outlets.

“In the past, most organizations have embraced web content security to prevent access to inappropriate content or to either filter or prevent access to webmail. However the explosion of social media sites such as blogs, YouTube and MySpace, means there are now many more avenues on the web for sensitive corporate information to potentially leak from the organization,” said Stephen Millard, Clearswift’s Vice President of Strategy.

“In today’s competitive environment, businesses cannot simply lock down access to Web 2.0 services as they are also locking themselves out of the potential business benefits they can bring. Clearswift’s web security technology can help protect organizations against these threats while at the same time, allowing them to access and enjoy the benefits of Web 2.0 services,” added Millard.

The MIMEsweeper Web Appliance includes user authentication, which allows web policy to be allocated to the user level, meaning administrators can define user groups, such as ‘Finance’ or ‘Executive’ and set appropriate policies for each group according to the type of web access they require. The reporting, therefore, can now also be based on user activity rather than a computer’s. Lexical analysis and pattern matching has also been added to the appliance, combined with robust recursive decomposition enabling administrators to detect content that contravenes the business policy. For example, advanced lexical analysis designed specifically for DLP (Data Loss Prevention) combined with pre-canned PCI and PII tokens prevent employees from uploading or sending documents containing credit card numbers. These advanced features can also be used to stop information such as social security numbers, patient identifiers or other personally identifiers from leaking out of the company.

The primary enhancement of the MIMEsweeper for Web software is the inclusion of new content and policy engine technology. The solution now provides the same high levels of detection and recognition of data types as currently provided by the MIMEsweeper Web Appliance, MIMEsweeper Email Appliance and MIMEsweeper for SMTP software. The addition of streaming media detection and recognition capabilities is another major addition to MIMEsweeper for Web, improving the reliability of accurately identifying streaming media. The upgrades to both products see Clearswift’s continued drive for consistency of policy across both its email and web portfolios.

“These product developments will provide users with the highest level of protection while at the same time aligning the web security product range with the email security product range for better consistency and therefore ease of management – saving IT administrators valuable time and boosting productivity,” said Millard.

Further enhancements to MIMEsweeper Web Appliance include:

• Policy routes and authentication
• Peer appliance policy replication
• SNMP management alerts

Further enhancements to MIMEsweeper for Web include:

• External DNS
• Auditing

For further information visit http://www.clearswift.co.uk/products/web.aspx.

About Clearswift

Clearswift simplifies content security.

Our products help organizations enforce best-practice email and web use, ensuring all inbound, outbound and internal traffic complies with stated policy and external regulations.

Our content filtering solutions make it easy to deploy, manage and maintain data leakage protection for email and web traffic, enabling compliance with regulations such as GLBA and HIPAA and industry standards such as PCI. Our inbound protection capability stops up to 100% of spam, spyware and malware.

Integrated solutions for Exchange and Domino traffic ensures that common policies can be applied on all email and web traffic, into, out of and within your organization.

More than twenty years of experience across 17,000 organizations, including highly sensitive military network security, has helped us raise content security standards while simplifying security management.

www.clearswift.com