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Once again, Websense has been recognized for three awards at the annual SC Magazine Awards. This year, we won all three for:

-          Best Enterprise Security Solution

-          Reader’s Trust Award for Websense Web Security Gateway

-          Best Corporate Security Blog

It is great to win in three different categories and to be recognized for exceptional enterprise protection and research of advanced attacks and evolving threats.

Websense Web Security Gateway Anywhere won the award for Best Enterprise Security Solution in the U.S. Excellence Award category and the award for Best Web Content Management Solution in the U.S. Reader’s Trust category. And the Websense Security Labs Blog won the award for Best Corporate Security Blog in the U.S. Social Media Award category. The awards were presented on February 28, 2012 at the SC Magazine Awards Gala in San Francisco.

The product awards are a testament to the foundations that allow us to claim that nobody in the world stops more threats:

-          The research and prevention expertise of the Websense Labs

-          ACE (the Websense Advanced Classification Engine), along with the ThreatSeeker Network

-          The TRITON architecture that products like Websense Web Security Gateway (along with email, mobile, and DLP solutions) are built upon.

Websense won by demonstrating the effectiveness against advanced malware of its real-time content analysis and unified security intelligence to a hand-picked expert panel of judges and the 2012 Reader Trust Voting Panel. 

The winner of this blogging category was determined by online votes from the general public, demonstrating that the Websense Security Labs blog is a trusted source for up-to-date and useful information on the latest outbreaks, threats, and other valuable security topics.

Recently, Blue Coat announced the end of support for Websense in the next version of ProxySG (v6.3) and noted that affected customers using Websense need to migrate to Blue Coat WebFilter. The announcement incorrectly states that Websense was not providing updates and support despite recently working together to solve a customer issue. Websense fully supports its integrated product versions and has an open offer to Blue Coat executives to integrate its real-time defenses to increase the security effectiveness provided to joint customers.

The ‘net-net’ is that Blue Coat, at its sole discretion, decided to end support for Websense, thus removing the option for customers to protect their networks with market-leading Websense® web filtering. The Websense solution is backed by the Websense ThreatSeeker® Network, which is now linked into Facebook and its more than 800 million users, plus the Advanced Classification Engine (ACE) with its multiple defenses and real-time composite scoring to detect advanced threats and stop data-stealing attacks.

Over the years, Blue Coat has been challenged to develop product solutions on two fronts, one being web security and the other WAN optimization. Resources at Blue Coat are limited, and trade-offs have to be considered: Blue Coat had seven product releases over the past five years, and they were focused on WAN optimization, not security.

Security advancements in ProxySG and the underlying operating system SGOS have been few, if any, per-product release cycles during these years, including the most recent release v6.2. An example of trade- offs includes changing SGOS v5.x to allow non-compliant protocol traffic by default to make WAN optimization deployments easier at the expense of security. The other side of release cycles is software testing, and that can be a major bottleneck and delay in time to market (even more so when building WAN optimization into a web proxy). In order for Blue Coat to sustain advancements in ProxySG for web security, they have to try to do more with less.

Removing custom SDKs that support market-leading web filtering is one way to accomplish this objective at an expense to customers. The result for Blue Coat appears to be less code, less testing, less functionality, fewer support issues, and faster time to market for a release cycle. For an organization facing escalating feature requests from customers and declining rankings in analyst quadrants, they are faced with cutting back to the basics and trying to move forward. The big question is if there is enough runway to lift off and change the downward slide in web security at Blue Coat.

Pease read the following document here to read why you should consider Blue Coat as a tactical solution and Websense as a longer-term strategic web defense.

We all know how hard it has been to get budget money over the last few years. You identify a problem, you evaluate solutions, and you know what you need to do. Then you hit a roadblock. You need a signature from someone who doesn’t know what you know, so you start looking for evidence that supports your recommendation.

I am very excited to give you some great new evidence. This will support your decision to use Websense to close the holes in your current security that web-based threats can come in through (and also prevent resulting data theft).

Gartner is the leading IT consultancy in the world, and they have named Websense a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Secure Web Gateway. 

This report helps give you the third-party validation that you need to avoid being the next data breach headline. You can download a copy of the report here. For more information, try contacting Websense or one of our resellers. 

What other tools are you using to wake up management to the threats and to get your project funded and fast-tracked?

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.

This week, I am doing two presentations at CSO Perspectives 2011. I look forward to sharing the stage with two dynamic CSOs who have deep experience securing their enterprises from every attack imaginable. And they both have their own views on how to deal with a fast-paced threat environment in ”organizations without borders.”

Jerry Archer is the Senior Vice President and Chief Security Officer for Sallie Mae. We’re going to talk about what Angelina Jolie has to do with data loss prevention. Sounds interesting, right? But Jerry and I have been talking about doing this talk for some time now.   It will be a great discussion.

Saying that you have the trust of your customers is one thing, proving it is entirely different, which is why Websense, a global leader in unified Web security, data security and email security solutions, is proud that it has been named a finalist in multiple categories in the 2011 SC Magazine Awards. Websense® Web Security Gateway was named a finalist in the Best Anti-Malware Gateway and Best Web Content Management Product categories in the Reader Trust Award category, which honors best-in-class security products and services, as determined by SC Magazine readers. Websense was also recognized in the Excellence Award category forBest Security Company, which acknowledges companies with superior security products that help customers tackle today's pressing security challenges.

Websense products were selected from hundreds of entries submitted in more than 31 technology categories. Finalists will be reviewed and winners will be chosen by the wide distribution of SC Magazine readers -- security and technology experts from large, medium, and small enterprises from all major vertical markets.

"Websense innovations illustrate the passion and creativity the IT security industry is taking to protect valuable assets and interests," says SC Magazine Editor-in-Chief   Illena Armstrong. "At the end of the day it's about protecting business, and Websense was named a finalist because of their contribution to this effort."

Read more here 

Security threats in email have been a longtime cause for concern.

Multimillion dollar companies that say they can combat these threats have made a lucrative business by providing reactive security specific to an individual piece of code. The problem with having this type of security in your organization is your exposure to modern threats. These security providers can only update signatures to chase threats after they happen, a method that is archaic at best.

Hackers have outsmarted antivirus vendors by placing threats where traditional antivirus companies can’t find them. These cybercriminals are no longer spending their time trying to get people to click on compromised images in emails, such as free screen-savers. Instead, hackers have gone from inserting threats in emails to using email as a vehicle to transport users to compromised sites.  Today, users are literally taken for a ride (via email) to these dangerous destinations online.

When the hackers changed their strategies, antivirus vendors added more products to their existing portfolios. These additional products are positioned to tie back to their core antivirus technology and are not unified in any way.  Most antivirus companies that offer email security solutions still only focus on blocking spam and stopping threats in the email itself. The risk to exposure is higher because most of these companies don’t have proper tools in place to analyze links that contain actual JavaScript attacks within the emails. In essence, these companies are not equipped to handle silent attacks such as a boot client which can install itself and run quietly in the background.

Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter were created for social networking — not security.  These sites—with their rapid flow of new content and communications—are powerful tools for networking and research.   But they’ve also opened up gaping security holes.   The dangers associated with social networking are magnified in businesses, as organizations are exposed to data loss risks in real time.  This problem becomes increasingly complex when you consider the speed in which the Web evolves and its adaptation as a business tool.

The famous bank robber Willie Sutton said that he robbed banks because, “That’s where the money is.” Today’s hackers attack large organizations because, “That’s where the data is.” Organized criminals—and many companies—see data as the world’s newest form of currency...

Last month, we took a deep dive into the risks of data loss in businesses:

·         Implementing DLP: Purchase with Caution?

·         Top 3 Steps to Simplify DLP Without Compromise by Rich Mogull, Securosis L.L.C.,

·         Websense Introduces “DLP for Download” – the Fastest and Easiest Way to Deploy Enterprise-Class Data Loss Prevention

·          Microsoft and Websense Team Up to Protect Data and Expand Solution Coverage

·         Websense Continues to Revolutionize DLP with New Technologies and an Unprecedented Deployment Model

This month, we are focusing on social media...

Today Websense revealed newly announced independent testing that confirms Websense® Web Security Gateway Anywhere™ provides the most comprehensive content security protection, besting all other security vendors in real-time detection of advanced modern malware, effectiveness and data loss prevention. Additionally, Websense was positioned as the leader in the Radicati Group Inc., “Corporate Web Security Market Quadrant 2010” above vendors including Blue Coat and Cisco.