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.

When I came to Websense® more than five years ago, data loss prevention (DLP) technology was early in its infancy. Organizations were just recognizing there was a problem, and vendors were over-marketing and under-delivering on solutions. We’ve come a long way since then, but while the technology and our understanding of the problem has advanced, many organizations still haven’t begun to tackle the problem. Why? Well, our research shows that many fear that DLP solutions are too complex and expensive to effectively implement. DLP is a challenging enough business problem; the technology you use should make the problem easier to solve, not more difficult. This is why we focused on maturing our DLP solution and unifying it within our TRITON™ architecture, making deployment fast and easy and providing value in minutes, not months. And that’s why we are so pleased to be recognized by Forrester Research, Inc. as a leader in the DLP market.

Forrester evaluated eight vendors, 94 criteria, and 3 themes, current offerings, strategy, and market presence. The report states that Websense was one of just two vendors who “led the pack" and was commended for “high levels of refinement, ease of use, and a deep bench of technology partners…” The independent research firm based its analysis of Websense Data Security Suite on several attributes…

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.