Secure web gateways (SWG) deliver full security capabilities and act as a proxy between the network and users. They consolidate a broad feature set to authenticate users, filter web traffic, identify cloud application usage, and more.
Regardless of the deployment model (conventional physical on-premise appliances, virtual appliances, or a cloud service), all SWG solutions work similarly to inspect traffic and pass it along only if it conforms with established policies. This enables granular control over web applications to protect against data loss.
Protection from Cyberattacks
Many cyberattacks with online pop-ups or phishing links mimic legitimate websites, prompting users to enter login information or download files. These malicious prompts can lead to malware infections, ransomware, and other attacks that destroy a business’ digital foundation and impact people’s data privacy.
To combat these threats, SWG solutions monitor web traffic 24/7 and block risks before they reach the organization’s network. This includes decoding thousands of apps and cloud services alongside web traffic to understand content and context for security and threat protection defenses and collecting rich metadata for analytics and investigations.
SWG solutions can also help prevent unauthorized shadow IT from gaining access to the network by identifying and blocking applications that may pose a higher risk. This provides greater visibility into the threat landscape and gives the security team stronger tools to mitigate risk.
Another security function of SWG solutions is SSL inspection, which analyzes encrypted web traffic to scan for malicious code and block it from entering the organization’s network. This helps protect against many advanced cyberattacks that bypass traditional firewalls and antivirus solutions. Many organizations deploy a cloud-based SWG solution to avoid the cost and complexity of maintaining on-premise hardware. This deployment model can also be more agile and flexible.
Data Loss Prevention
SWG solutions can be critical to cybersecurity defenses as attackers create new malicious code and attacks. They sit between your network and employees, blocking access to unauthorized sites, files and applications while enforcing corporate policies.
The SWG can also scan incoming data packets to identify suspicious activity, ensuring no unauthorized information is leaving your network. This is especially useful with online pop-ups and phishing attacks that often look very realistic and can trick users into entering their login credentials, sharing sensitive information like credit card numbers or downloading a file.
SWGs can also help with the protection of your cloud assets. While most traditional SWG solutions offer basic security features, Next Gen SWGs can provide granular visibility and policy control for cloud apps and services accessed through web browsers. This allows you to enforce secure access policies based on user, device, location and more for cloud apps that aren’t part of your corporate network.
The SWG can inspect SSL-encrypted traffic and scan it for malware or dangerous code before allowing it into your network. This can be very beneficial with cloud services that may not have a traditional network connection and are at greater risk for cyberattacks. A Next-Gen SWG can also provide DLP and user/entity behavior analytics to protect against internal threats and insiders.
Traffic Inspection
Sitting between the network and users, SWG solutions inspect all traffic entering or leaving the company network. They can decode encrypted* HTTPS traffic to scan content for malware and phishing. This can provide additional protection to the organization beyond traditional endpoint security devices.
In addition, many SWG solutions can filter web traffic. This can block certain kinds of content, like explicit videos or photos, from being downloaded on the network. This is often used to enforce company policy.
Lastly, SWGs can also act as a proxy to increase performance and security. This means all downloads will go through the gateway before reaching their intended destination. This can help to prevent attackers from hiding malicious code in files that may otherwise go undetected by other traditional defenses.
Next Gen SWG solutions are designed to integrate with other tools in the security stack. These include cloud access security brokers (CASBs), data loss prevention (DLP) and user/entity behavior analytics (UEBA). This allows organizations to reduce risk, accelerate performance and gain unrivaled visibility into any cloud, web or private application activity. These features provide complete cyberattack protection and ensure compliance with industry regulations like GDPR or HIPAA. This is what makes SWGs so important in the modern cybersecurity landscape.
Compliance
Security is paramount in a digital age where employees can work from anywhere, on any device, and access applications stored in the cloud rather than your data centers. Using an SWG can help you comply with regulations such as HIPAA and PCI, prevent data breaches and loss, and protect your sensitive assets.
SWGs protect from the most common cyberattacks by inspecting all incoming traffic, identifying the threats they’re trying to block and preventing them from entering your network. They also protect against unauthorized use of unsanctioned web apps like file sharing, teleconferencing, or cloud storage tools that expose your organization to risks.
As a proxy server, all incoming and outgoing web traffic goes through the SWG before passing it to users. This ensures that all incoming and outgoing traffic has been inspected for vulnerabilities by the SWG, protecting your network and devices from malware.
A next-generation SWG offers a wide range of other features that complement your existing security solutions to create a complete security stack known as Security Service Edge (SSE). SWGs, when paired with CASBs and DLP, deliver the single-pass architecture required to reduce risk and accelerate performance without causing the hiccups associated with traditional perimeter appliances. A next-generation SWG also performs continuous monitoring to dynamically add new threat signatures to a pool, allowing it to identify and stop attacks that other security solutions miss or misidentify.
