Make Your Secure Web Gateway Look Amazing. Web gateways are software applications that allow organizations to securely connect their internal networks to external networks such as the Internet.
They provide access control, authentication, encryption, and other functions necessary to ensure network security.
Here are nine secrets that will make your secure web gateway look amazing.
1 – Simple and Accessible User Interface
The main purpose of a web gateway is to ensure that only the right people have access to your network. The interface has to allow the system administrators to set up and manage user accounts, define rules to control access rights, and configure additional features such as encryption.
Web-based management consoles are becoming more and more popular because they offer easy accessibility, simple navigation and a single point of administration.
2 – Productivity Tools
Web gateways extend beyond just security. They are also used for other purposes such as bandwidth management, bandwidth shaping, content filtering, intrusion prevention systems (IPS), anti-virus protection, URL filtering, deep packet inspection (DPI), traffic monitoring, reporting tools, and protocol testing… The list goes on and on.
3 – High Availability
Having a web gateway down means not having Internet access or not receiving your email. It’s critical that you always have high availability with zero downtime. There are different ways to achieve this: having multiple redundant gateways or load balancing among them.
Further, creating critical rules that will redirect users to another gateway if one is down; creating redundant DNS servers in case something happens with one of them; deploying virtual gateways using virtual machine technology…
4 – Secure Perimeter
A web gateway protects the perimeter by inspecting all incoming traffic and blocking known attacks, viruses and other types of malicious content before they enter the organization’s network.
It also acts as a firewall by filtering internal traffic from external sources based on user account settings and rules defined by system administrators.
5 – Mobile Devices
Mobile devices are becoming increasingly popular these days. Most people can’t live without their smartphones or tablets nowadays. A web gateway should provide secure remote access for all these devices without compromising on performance or security.
You might want to consider implementing multi-factor authentication for greater security or implementing SSL VPN technology for remote access over an encrypted tunnel.
6 – Advanced Threat Protection with Behavior Analysis
Web gateways can also provide advanced threat protection by analyzing the behavior of different users and detecting suspicious activity based on user accounts, remote IP addresses, IP addresses, URLs, and other parameters.
This is usually done through an intelligent correlation engine which is able to detect patterns of malicious behavior automatically and without human intervention.
7 – Spam Filtering Penance
Email spam has become a real problem these days. According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, spam will amount to 99% of all email traffic by 2017. This means that if you don’t have some sort of spam filtering, your employees will spend all their time wading through junk emails, instead of doing their jobs.
Spam filtering can be integrated with a web gateway to block unwanted emails, so you don’t have to deal with them in the first place.
8 – Intrusion Detection and Prevention Abilities
An intrusion detection system (IDS) monitors network traffic for malicious activity such as unauthorized access attempts, probes or other attacks against the network. IDSs are usually combined with intrusion prevention systems (IPS), which try to detect and stop attacks before they can cause any damage.
These technologies are not only good for spotting attacks on your network, but they are also useful for protecting web gateways from malware infection or data theft.
9 – Reporting Capabilities
The number one reason why organizations deploy web gateways is security. It’s always good to know what types of threats you face and how much damage they are causing.
Web gateways can provide detailed reports on all sorts of different events such as security incidents (such as infections), Internet traffic volume statistics (such as traffic volume by country), and many others that might help you make better business decisions in the future.
Conclusion:
A web gateway is an essential tool for any organization that relies heavily on the Internet or wants to ensure secure remote access for mobile users.
It’s a complex piece of software that has to be highly available, easy to use, feature-rich and well-protected against attacks at all times. This is why it’s important to choose wisely when selecting a web gateway solution for your needs.