A security appliance from Blue Coat Systems allows
companies to scan web traffic to their network at high speed,
spotting viruses and malicious file downloads from web pages or
web-based e-mail at the network perimeter.
The Blue Coat ProxyAV is an appliance which scans traffic to web
browsers for Trojan horse programs, internet worms and malicious
content buried in HTTP traffic.
By joining anti-virus detection to Blue Coat's proprietary
operating system and dedicated hardware platform, the ProxyAV is
designed to make anti-virus scanning of web traffic feasible for
large networks and give executives the ability to see how employees
are using the internet, said Steve Mullaney, vice-president of
marketing at Blue Coat.
ProxyAV works together with Blue Coat's ProxySG series
appliances. Inbound web traffic is scanned first by the ProxySG to
determine whether it contains content that needs to be scanned.
Web objects that meet the ProxySG's criteria are sent to the
ProxyAV appliance, which scans them for viruses. Objects that are
found to contain viruses are discarded. Objects that pass the scan
are returned to the ProxySG appliance and cached for future
reference.
The appliance is available in two models, a 400 and 2000 series,
and works with anti-virus engines from Sophos, Network Associates '
McAfee anti-virus unit, Trend Micro and Panda Software.
The 400 series comes in two models: the 400-E0, which features
an 850MHz Intel Celeron processor and 512Mbytes of Ram, and the
400-E1, which comes with a 1.26GHz Intel Pentium III processor.
The 2000 series ranges from the 2000-EO, which features a 2GHz
Intel Xeon processor and 768Mbytes of Ram, to the 2000-E3, which
features two 2.4GHz Xeons and 3Gbytes of Ram.
The appliances can process up to 249mbps of throughput with
just four milliseconds of latency, on average, for web traffic.
The Blue Coat Proxy AV is available immediately. Prices range
from $4,500 (£2,475) to $21,000 for higher-end devices.
Paul Roberts writes for IDG News Service