* Using proxy appliances to better control and secure corporate Internet access and traffic
Deploying and using some sort of proxy system is nothing new. Proxy servers and proxy cache to name a couple, have been used to offload work and storage for example in large environments to help boost net performance.
Our Technology Update author (jeff.hughes@bluecoat.com.) this week talks of using proxy appliances to better control and secure corporate Internet access and traffic.
According to our author a proxy appliance would sit between users on a network and the Internet. It would serve as a central point of control over Internet use by intercepting and evaluating Web protocol traffic such as HTTP, HTTPS and FTP. Based on a number of criteria, access rights for example, the appliance would determine where the user could go.
As an example, our author says an outbound request might contain a peer-to-peer user agent type that corporate policy does not permit. The peer-to-peer request can be blocked, and the user can be notified that the request has been denied. Other requests not subject to the policy are forwarded to the external destination server, where the server then responds to the proxy’s request for content.
Such appliances are available from Cisco, Blue Coat and others.https://www.nwfusion.com/news/tech/2004/0510techupdate.html
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