Green Bay Packers Tackle Spyware With Preventive Blue Coat Solution
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Dec. 7, 2004 — Blue Coat® Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: BCSI), a leading provider of proxy appliances, today announced that the National Football League (NFL) Green Bay Packers are protecting players, coaches and staff from the threat of spyware with Blue Coat’s preventive gateway anti-spyware solution.
Prior to Blue Coat, the Packers struggled to keep spyware off the network with desktop based anti-virus and anti-spyware solutions. These “reactive” tools, which address spyware after it infects nodes on the network, quickly proved ineffective with IT staff having to spend an average of one day per week attending to desktop and laptop computers.
The Packers addressed the problem with Blue Coat’s preventive gateway anti-spyware solution, which combines the ProxySGâ„? and ProxyAVâ„? appliances to stop “drive-by” spyware installations, block access to known spyware Web sites and scan Web content for known spyware signatures. Blue Coat’s solution also incorporates detailed reporting capabilities to help the Packers IT team quickly identify infected computers for a targeted, more efficient clean-up.
“Spyware was consuming considerable amounts of IT manpower and was putting our entire organization at risk each week, with 150-200 instances of spyware and adware identified on infected machines,” said Wayne Wichlacz, director of information technology for the Green Bay Packers. “We could no longer deal with spyware in a reactive manner. We deployed Blue Coat’s gateway anti-spyware solution to stop known and unknown forms of spyware before our internal systems can become infected.”
As a proxy, Blue Coat sits in the middle of the Web data stream to inspect Web traffic traversing the network perimeter, including spyware. At this powerful position in the network, Blue Coat applies its Spyware Policy Control functionality to inspect, filter and block Web content associated with spyware installation software. This capability is critical when spyware originates from an unknown Web site and when there is no known signature available to detect the malicious program.
“Blue Coat has been the first and only effective solution for preventing spyware from landing on the network,” said Mark Sollazo, president of SynerComm (www.synercomm.com), a Blue Coat Premier Partner. “Unlike other spyware tools that rely on known patterns, signatures or URLs to reactively detect spyware, Blue Coat provides a preventive approach that inspects Web content for spyware installers and previously unidentified forms of spyware programs.”
About Blue Coat Systems
Blue Coat enables organizations to keep “good” employees from doing “bad” things on the Internet. Blue Coat high-performance proxy appliances provide visibility and control of Web communications to address today’s new business risks – such as inappropriate Web surfing, spyware, viruses brought in via back door channels such as instant messaging and Web-based email, and network resource abuse due to peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and video streaming. Trusted by many of the world’s most influential organizations, Blue Coat has shipped more than 20,000 proxy appliances. Blue Coat is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and can be reached at (408) 220-2200 or www.bluecoat.com.