Do you know why a secure web gateway is crucial to your business? Do you know how to use this tool well? Find out the answers below.
Why a Secure Web Gateway Is Crucial to Your Business
A secure web gateway (SWG) is crucial to your business due to various reasons. Firstly, an SWG can help you secure your internal network from external threats. It works similarly with routers and firewalls. However, routers and firewalls are used for the protection of data packets within the network.
They are not capable of protecting the network from harmful elements outside your network. An SWG can help you secure your system from outside threats that might try to enter your network over the Internet.
Secondly, an SWG can help you improve the security of your web applications. It can detect vulnerabilities and protect your system from malicious attacks. One that might try to exploit these vulnerabilities in your application.
Thirdly, an SWG can also be used for logging purposes. It can capture traffic and monitor user activities on the web. Such as what pages they visited, what information they searched for, and so on. This is particularly useful when users’ activities raise security-related alarms. Using an SWG for logging purposes allows you to pinpoint the potential problems quickly. And then take countermeasures before further damages occur.
Finally, an SWG allows you to protect your database servers from external threats such as DDoS attacks. These attacks have become more common nowadays because DDoS service providers have proliferated in recent years.
DDoS attacks are powerful enough to take down a server within a few minutes or hours. A lot of businesses have been affected by this threat and have lost their database servers as a result of DDoS attacks. So, using an SWG is one way of preventing such problems. Because it can block malicious traffic before they reach your database servers.
How to Use Secure Web Gateway for Your Business
Before fully using an SWG within your company, you must first understand how it works. After that, you must get your company’s network audited by a professional security company. This is essential because you will need to know the vulnerabilities of your system first before taking countermeasures.
An SWG is similar to a firewall in many ways, but not in all. Whereas a firewall blocks packets based on the protocol and port, an SWG blocks packets based on the content. That is, it can block packets based on the URL and the content within that URL.
Setting up an SWG within your company requires some basic knowledge about networking. As well as knowledge about TCP/IP stack. If you have this knowledge already, then setting up an SWG is straightforward.
Conclusion
As you can see, your business must use a secure web gateway. It can help you improve the security of your web applications and protect your system from external threats. It can also be used for logging purposes. So, what are you waiting for? Look for the right SWG for your company today.