Blue Coat Systems has announced new enhancements to its Blue Coat ProxySG appliances that expand the options and flexibility for support of enterprise authentication processes that verify a network user’s identity.
Verified identity is essential to grant or limit access to certain applications, determine network priority and bandwidth, assign group membership or apply other permissions or controls.
Blue Coat, who claims that its ProxySG appliances are the only WAN optimization solution to offer integrated authentication has enabled, with the new enhancements to ProxySG, to provide extensive and flexible authentication options for Secure Web Gateway deployments that combine Web security, policy control and acceleration.
“As the only authenticated WAN optimization solution provider in the market, we believe it is important not only to educate our customer base on the need and significance to authenticate their applications, we also look to create different paths to innovate our authentication processes. This latest enhancement allows us to cover another authentication base while at the same time still provide a secure environment for companies in the Asia Pacific region to access relevant applications,” said Lim Pun Kok, Managing Director for ASEAN and ANZ, Blue Coat Systems.
In addition to existing authentication support, ProxySG appliances will now offer XML Realm authentication support, which uses Web 2.0 technology to enable customers to support new or non-standard authentication systems. XML Realm authentication support provides an easy scripting facility for customers to create integration points for different authentication types.
Blue Coat ProxySG appliances integrate authentication mechanisms for applications using Web (HTTP) and Secure Web (HTTPS), FTP, CIFS, MAPI, and protocols for instant messaging, streaming media and peer-to-peer file sharing. In addition, ProxySG appliances can support multiple users sharing the same IP address in virtualization environments, such as with Citrix Presentation Server.
“Blue Coat ProxySG appliances provide a rich, flexible platform for WAN optimization and Secure Web Gateway and support all common systems for authenticating user identities,” said Bethany Mayer, senior vice president, Worldwide Marketing, Blue Coat Systems.
“ProxySG appliances know each user, which is something unique in the WAN optimization market and enables access and acceleration decisions based on individual users and applications.”
Extended authentication is available in the latest release of operating system software for Blue Coat ProxySG appliances, SGOS 5.2, which is now the standard shipping version of the product.
There is no extra cost for the features. Existing customers with maintenance contracts can download the software at no charge. |
