Organisations shouldn’t have to choose between security appliances on-premise and security solutions on the cloud. Blue Coat’s acting VP of marketing and product Jonathan Andresen finds that this is one of the main conundrums companies are facing today and proposes instead that they choose both.
That BYOD trend has impacted corporate networks in two significant ways – in terms of application performance and also security. Andresen said, “These types of devices are driving demand for new types of applications.” Not only that, but a mobile workforce is expecting to also access corporate data from outside firewalled networks, and on different kinds of devices.
These days, almost every vertical industry is taking advantage of more powerful devices and faster Internet to use cloud-based or Web apps. “Industries with a lot of branches, it’s very important (for them) to manage that, especially in this region where offices are geographically dispersed,” said Andresen.
That’s the rationale behind Blue Coat’s new unified security messaging. “We think companies don’t just want to buy an appliance. Put it at the gateway and it has value, but today the workforce is accessing Web-based content when they are travelling, on their mobile devices… you can’t have an appliance everywhere, it’s just too expensive!”
What Blue Coat basically has done is they have combined their existing Proxy SG appliance and cloud-based security. The difference between Blue Coat’s offering and other hardware-combine-with-cloud-solutions offering is that there is true integration by way of Blue Coat having enabled syncing of data, reporting, policy and management, and allowing the administrator to manage all the different locations (branches) and users from a single browser interface.
“There is shift in focus from securing the network, to securing the user instead,” explained Andresen. “Having those both (cloud and appliance) work together seamlessly and then having them both managed from one interface is a powerful thing.”
What Andresen has seen in Malaysia is that some businesses opt for the cloud model, while companies with appliances are looking to beef up with cloud solutions as well. According to Gartner, Blue Coat holds a 44-percent market share when it comes to Web security appliances.
“We have had our appliances for years, our cloud is great, and the third option now is both.” Andresen emphasised.
