As traditional network perimeters disappear and employees connect to cloud applications via personal devices, a strong, secure gateway is more important than ever.
A next-generation SWG can deliver on this need by providing security for remote work environments.
From URL filtering to decoding app API traffic, these gateways deliver a full suite of capabilities that include:
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Security
As a safeguard against cyberattacks, the secure web gateway checks incoming and outgoing traffic. When a suspicious, malicious, or unknown request is made, the SWG analyzes it against its rules and allowed lists, then either let the request through or blocks it to ensure it cannot reach your network or systems and infiltrate your data. This is a critical capability, especially as experts predict six billion phishing attacks will be launched in 2022 alone.
The next generation security gateway also helps improve productivity by blocking access to non-work-related sites and applications such as social media, gambling, or adult content. This means less distraction and a better focus on work tasks.
A top-rated SWG will protect against threats that spy or tamper with web traffic in transit, including encryption attacks. A robust SWG will also offer granular controls to enforce policies based on user, device, or location – regardless of whether employees work online or use private apps on their devices.
In addition, a next-gen SWG will be able to see encrypted traffic and provide visibility to security risks such as malware or unauthorized file downloads. This is important because many tools used to carry out cyberattacks today are hidden behind VPNs and MPLS links. If you are searching for the right SWG for your organization, look beyond the product to find one that is cloud-delivered and can be integrated with your other security technologies.
Visibility
As work environments move to a more decentralized model, it’s harder for security teams to keep tabs on what employees are doing and where they’re doing it. A Secure Web Gateway (SWG) is a critical tool for helping protect remote employees and their data from cyberattacks.
An SWG’s origins can be traced to the early days of the Internet when a proxy server was deployed behind the firewall to monitor incoming traffic for web content that violated corporate access policy. Proxies have since evolved to offer more in-depth inspection capabilities for all incoming and outgoing network data, including malware detection and blocking, application controls, SSL/TLS decryption and inspection, and threat intelligence.
Increasingly, organizations are using cloud applications and tools to enable remote workers. These typically require users to connect to the company’s network and systems through a VPN. This creates a potential blind spot that leaves the enterprise vulnerable when workers disconnect from the VPN to access these tools on the open Internet. An SWG can help overcome this blind spot by monitoring all internet activity 24/7 for managed and unmanaged cloud apps, web services and internet traffic.
A SWG can also identify patterns and phrases in outbound data that match social security numbers, credit card information, medical records or intellectual property to prevent sensitive data from leaving the enterprise. Additionally, a SWG can identify and block non-work-related websites and applications to help increase productivity by keeping employees focused on their tasks.
Control
Secure web gateways (SWG) traditionally acted as a chokepoint for all internet traffic. As such, they analyzed all traffic and compared URLs against existing blocklists to identify suspicious websites or applications which could be blocked on the network edge.
Modern threats are more complex and sophisticated. As a result, the threat surface of corporate networks has expanded to include a myriad of shadow IT applications, which often need to be vetted or secured properly. This widens the attack surface and increases the risk of a data breach. A next-generation SWG can prevent this by identifying and responding to shadow IT with granular application controls.
Furthermore, the SWG can decrypt SSL/TLS-encrypted traffic to inspect it for malicious code or data sent outside the corporate network. This enables the SWG to detect and block unauthorized outbound data and ensure strict policy compliance.
Most importantly, the SWG can perform real-time zero-day malware and phishing protection with dynamic threat intelligence for URLs, IPs, and file hashes, along with machine-learning or emulation-based sandboxing capabilities to prevent unknown threats from entering the network or reaching endpoint devices. It also identifies and blocks P2P and other file-sharing applications that may distribute pirated software or expose confidential information. This granular control allows the SWG to categorize web traffic and enforce security and compliance policies per regulatory standards such as PCI or GDPR.
Flexibility
The transition to a cloud and remote work world has dramatically changed IT environments, making it more difficult for legacy secure web gateways (SWG) to protect against web-borne threats. With traditional network perimeters disappearing, employees connect to corporate infrastructure and applications from virtually anywhere in the world using unsecured devices.
Employees also download various unauthorized applications, which widens the attack surface and exposes organizational data to sophisticated attacks such as ransomware and phishing. A next-generation SWG with integrated security controls, including sandboxing and global threat intelligence, can detect and block these advanced threats before they reach the network.
With a SaaS delivery model, next-generation SWG solutions eliminate the need for hardware appliances, reducing total operating costs and complexity while boosting performance and reliability. They also support a direct-to-cloud architecture that reduces MPLS costs, making them an ideal solution for enabling secure remote work.
A next-generation SWG provides inline visibility, real-time data, and threat protection for managed and unmanaged apps, cloud services, and websites across all devices. They can decrypt and inspect encrypted traffic, critical in today’s world where most Internet traffic is encrypted, and malicious insiders steal PII or other sensitive information through credential stuffing, accounting for 61% of all data breaches1. A next-generation SWG can also identify and block applications popular among P2P file sharers, such as torrents, letting organizations focus on business-critical applications while keeping out the noise of non-work related traffic.
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