RSA '07: ScanSafe scours Web search results

Upgraded service protects users from malicious, inappropriate sites.

Internet security company ScanSafe on Monday announced a new feature for its Web Filtering hosted service that blocks employees from visiting malicious or inappropriate Web sites that are listed among results in a Web search.

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Internet security company ScanSafe on Monday announced a new feature for its Web Filtering hosted service that blocks employees from visiting malicious or inappropriate Web sites that are listed among results in a Web search.

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Called SearchAhead, the feature classifies results from often-used search engines including Google, Yahoo, and MSN. It will block employees from visiting those with content that goes against corporate policies – such as pornography – as well as those known to download code onto visitors’ PCs, says Dan Nadir, vice president of product strategy with ScanSafe.

More than 90% of the sites visited for the first time by Web users were found via searches, he says, and one in five search results are of URLs containing malware or offensive content.

Because this new feature is part of ScanSafe’s hosted service that sits between the Internet and a customer site, the company can superimpose warnings on top of the authentic search-result pages, says Nadir. The warnings appear as color-coded traffic lights and include detailed explanations.

These warnings are based on ScanSafe’s real-time scanning of the sites listed in search results, which is more effective than relying on databases of Web sites known to contain malicious code or offensive content since they may not be as up to date, Nadir says.

The new feature will be particularly useful in enforcing corporate policy regarding Web use, says one analyst.

“Integrating some very visual, intuitive tools into things people already know and use is a great way of raising awareness…which is half the battle,” says Paul Stamp [stet], senior editor at Forrester Research. “Employees have no choice but to comply with the policy, so you’re saving the users from themselves.”

SearchAhead is available now, for no additional charge, as part of ScanSafe’s Web Filtering service, which is designed to keep viruses, spyware, and other malicious code out of corporate networks by having all of its customers' HTTP inbound and outbound traffic travel through its data center for scanning and filtering. The service is available through ScanSafe channel partners.

The SearchAhead feature also is available to individuals for free from a Web site ScanSafe launched last year called Scandoo.

ScanSafe competes with hosted Web filtering services from MessageLabs and others.