New secure Web gateways eye next-generation Web-application traffic

Matt Kesner, CIO at Silicon Valley law firm Fenwick & West, is proud to say his users are on the bleeding edge of the Web 2.0 revolution, using such tools as blogging, instant messaging, Web-based conferencing and social networking.

After all, they have to keep up with the high-tech clients they represent. Kesner also knows firsthand the security risks these immature technologies pose. Two years ago, despite having installed antivirus, antimalware and antispyware software on every user's machine, he found his network was the source of more than 50 exploits and more than 1,000 midlevel infections, including a few live "phone home" attacks that were using the firm's machines to send information out of the network. "That was disturbing to us. We thought we were protected all the way around. We even had firewalls on each user's machine," he says.

Kesner found the only way to combat such emerging threats was to use secure Web gateways, a new class of technology that sits between the Internet and the edge of the network. Secure Web gateways employ URL and malware filtering and application-level controls. They let companies control employees' access to and use of Web applications and sites based on corporate and regulatory compliance policies.

Peter Firstbrook, research director for Gartner's Information Security and Privacy Group, first coined the term "secure Web gateway" in 2006 to describe a multifunction, integrated approach to Web security for Web-based applications. "Most large enterprises today have some combination of network firewall, URL filter and proxy server to protect and manage Web traffic," he says. These are proving to be woefully inadequate in dealing with Web threats like those being generated by Web-borne malware, however: "Fewer than 15% of enterprises scan Web traffic for viruses," he says.