Security vendors find a common language

Web gateway developer Blue Coat and content security specialist Vericept have adopted a standard called ICAP to enable their devices to collaborate.

The aim, said Blue Coat, is to prevent sensitive corporate data or intellectual property leaking out of an organisation via routes such as webmail, SSL-encrypted web applications or FTP.

ICAP is an HTTP-based standard which allows one server to offload specific content to another. In this case, Blue Coat's ProxySG will use it to pass suspect traffic - decrypting SSL traffic if necessary - to the Vericept device for content scanning.

Encrypted traffic is a growing problem for content security companies, said Carrie Oakes, Blue Coat's product and technical marketing VP. "Data loss prevention requires that all web communications be monitored and controlled, including those shrouded in SSL encryption," she added.

ProxySG's security features are aimed more at inbound content - it can block malware, control traffic, and do URL filtering, for example. The advantage of ICAP is that it enables outbound content security to be added without additional load on the gateway, because it moves the workload to a dedicated device.

According to Vericept, its Monitor system can identify over 70 different risk categories, from customer data loss to regulatory compliance issues. Security admins can create and add their own policies, as well as use ones pre-defined by Vericept.