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Last week we announced several new, important core security technologies that we added to our TRITON architecture. Websense ACE now includes 10 new defense innovations; seven are focused on outbound traffic to keep data theft and call-home communications contained, preventing theft or loss. Because so many of them are industry firsts, I wanted to take a moment to explain what many of these do and why we created them.

Truth is, the bad guys are stealing corporate data and avoiding detection using advanced techniques. In just the last year, we've seen key intellectual property and user identities stolen from corporations and government agencies, including some you would least expect-including entertainment (gaming) and security companies!

Below are a few examples of how cyber criminals are going undetected, stealing your IP, and how we can stop it from happening.

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.XXX was approved as a "top-level domain" address last year by ICANN, and was set up to make it easier to identify adult sites. However, it has also had some unintended consequences.

The only constant in corporate security is change. Websense became famous as the best URL filtering company. We invented our ThreatSeeker Network and the world’s first Honey Grid, and as a result, we know the Web better than anyone else. Our customers saw Websense filtering as nice-to-have software that helped employees be productive and prohibited inappropriate use of a company’s Internet access.

But as our knowledge of the Web deepened, we were on the front lines as more attacks and security threats moved online. We quickly became the go-to experts on Web-based threats and our technology was so ingrained within the Web that we often were the first company to detect these threats. As we moved from filtering to Web security, we often protected our customers from Web threats before competitors were even aware that they existed.

Leading market research firm IDC just reported that Websense is at the center of “content security” convergence. At Websense, are obviously pleased with this conclusion.  We’ve spent the last six years transforming our portfolio and company from a nice-to-have URL filter to a mission-critical content security solution.  So IDC’s affirmation is music to our ears.  But many security professionals might be wondering: just what exactly is content security? How is it different from traditional security? And why should I care? So let’s take a moment to explore these questions, starting with the last question first: you should care because the traditional pillars of enterprise security—perimeter and endpoint security – are clearly no longer cutting the mustard.  In fact, talking about them takes me back to my college days preparing for the LSAT when we toyed with logical fallacies and the principle that something can be necessary, but not sufficient.   Again, just to be clear – I’m stating that both perimeter and endpoint security ARE necessary… they’re just NOT sufficient.

Yesterday we announced a revolutionary new weapon for those looking to combat today’s most pressing and urgent security issues, while still taking full advantage of all that the internet has to offer.

Let’s face it: Zeus, Stuxnet, Aurora, and WikiLeaks prove that legacy security products are totally ineffective against modern threats. This is a wakeup call for the security industry. 

Consider these facts from a recent Miercom test:

Blue Coat is only 18.9 % effective at blocking modern malware threats, Cisco is only 12.8% effective. Blue Coat is only 29.4% effective at blocking dynamic content on the social Web. McAfee is only 19.8% effective.

And our own research shows that 20 percent of daily email threats are undetected by AV, UTMs, firewalls, and proxies. This is a failure of the security industry in general, and it cannot be solved with the latest DAT file.

In the meantime, while the rest of the industry is talking about concepts down the road, the real security paradigm shift occurred yesterday.