This appliance is designed to offer enterprise-class protection by creating an internet gateway between a private corporate network and the public internet. It is targeted at small enterprises and branch office environments.
The well-designed and sturdy 1U rack-mountable unit ships with 512MB of main RAM memory and an 80GB hard drive. It uses a high-performance, object-based operating system that incorporates integrated caching functionality to boost web access speeds.
It provides security functionality and content filtering designed to monitor unauthorized use of IM and P2P within organizations. It can also be configured with additional anti-virus modules that block the entry of malicious code via backdoors introduced by P2P, email and IM. This is achieved through integration with the company's ProxyAV service, which supports a choice of engines to scan web content in real time.
ProxySG is capable of blocking access to website administrators deemed undesirable and block file downloads based on their content type. The device can filter based on common internet protocols, including: http and https; ftp; Telnet; SOCKS; common IM services such as those offered by Yahoo!, AOL, Microsoft IM; P2P networks such as Kazaa and Morpheus and multimedia applications including Windows Media Player, Real Player and Quicktime.
Installation was surprisingly simple for such a high-end device. The first stage involved setting the unit up on the network with an initial static IP address, and configuring subnets, gateway and DNS parameters. It is then necessary to set up the actual policies via the well-designed web-based management console. The uncluttered interface offers functional options, including IM logging and management; proxy support control for the comprehensive range of protocols; content filtering; management of streaming content, and P2P.
As part of the warranty, users are given limited access to maintenance software releases from Blue Coat's support website.
