Symantec Web Gateway 5.0 – Forward Thinking Protection against Advanced Threats

I am pleased to announce that Symantec Web Gateway 5.0 is now available!  Nearly half of our production deployments have already upgraded to the new version and the software is now available to all customers. 

This release brings not only a significant change in our product, but also significant change in the way organizations defend against malware at the gateway.  Symantec’s introduction of our Insight file reputation technology into our enterprise security product stack represents a generational leap in malware detection and dramatically changes the game against malware writers.  Insight allows Web Gateway customers to block a malicious file that no one has ever seen before at the edge, before it even gets to the user endpoint.  An attacker can no longer create a single file for a targeted attack on a key executive or user and assume that it will make it past a heuristic.  A malicious attack kit user or FakeAV writer can no longer create a polymorphic script that will deliver payload that bypasses static AV signatures.  Insight will know whether these files are brand new and created just to infect you, of a given age and linked to other infections, or whether these files have been downloaded and trusted by 175+ million systems across the world.  I am extremely pleased that by adding the Insight technology to the Web Gateway’s already impressive array of defenses, we’ve provided our customers with the best protection in the industry.

We’ve also added a host of features that make our product easier to deploy, manage, and integrate with other Symantec solutions.

The addition of Proxy, Inline + Proxy, and Virtual deployment options gives a Symantec Web Gateway customer many choices in how to deploy their Web security depending on both their functional and network topology needs.  I am especially proud of the Inline + Proxy deployment model, as it gives our customers the ‘best of both worlds’ – the ability to proxy for those who require that capability and the ability to inspect and act on all non-proxied traffic on the same appliance. 

Allowing our customers to deploy the product as a virtual appliance on ESX/ESXi has been a goal since the product launched.  Our customers and partners looked at our Messaging Gateway success in the virtual field and told us that this is an option that they want and expect from Symantec, and we are more than happy to deliver on that promise today.  You can now deploy SWG on VMWare ESX/ESXi 4.0 and above.  For more details, please see our Implementation Guide.  Our new ability to do scheduled, encrypted backups and then restore those backups to any SWG running the same version lets our customers move their configurations from appliance to appliance, physical or virtual, easier than ever before.

Last, but certainly not least, is our new integration with our market leading Data Loss Prevention product.  We can now quickly and efficiently decrypt HTTPS and pass all outbound HTTP and HTTPS content to Symantec DLP Network Prevent for Web for inspection.  This gives our customers the ability to inspect content to the Web for not just malware, but for potential loss of private and confidential data as well.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our 350+ external Beta testers for their efforts – the product team considers the Beta to have been a huge success and a great contributor to the quality of the product.  As for what’s next?  We are already under way working on providing even more value to our customers.  I would love to hear what you want to see in the product in the coming releases.  Please hop on over to our Ideas section and post what you want to see next.

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