Seven new security vendors join ETM ready program, increasing momentum to combat security threats hiding in encrypted traffic
Blue Coat Systems has announced it has added seven new partners to the Blue Coat Encrypted Traffic Management (ETM) Ready Program, bringing the total number of partners to 17. This group of leading security vendors forms the largest industry collaboration to help customers expose and combat threats hiding in encrypted traffic while also protecting privacy and ensuring compliance. Launched in March 2015, the ETM Ready Program is designed to prepare and certify Blue Coat Technology Alliance Partners to integrate SSL visibility solutions into the Blue Coat architecture, resulting in best-in-class security products to effectively detect and eliminate the hidden threats in encrypted traffic.
New members eSentire, Gigamon, LogRhythm, ManagedMethods, Symantec, TopSpin Security and Trend Micro join founding ETM Ready partners CA Technologies, Cyphort, Damballa, Fidelis Cybersecurity, HP, Lastline, RSA, SafeNet, Inc. (now Gemalto), Venafi and VSS Monitoring.
On the 8th of October, the number of both business and consumer websites using SSL encryption as the default for securing all data in transit continues to grow. According to Blue Coat Labs research, of the top 10 most visited web sites, 100 per cent of them use HTTPS, or encrypted traffic, rendering 100 per cent of that traffic invisible to all security devices unless it is decrypted. The growing use of encryption to address privacy concerns is creating a perfect set of conditions for cyber criminals to hide malware inside encrypted transactions. In fact, Blue Coat researchers have found that it often reduces the level of sophistication required for malware to avoid detection; thereby making it easier for malware to get onto the network. The Blue Coat researchers found that over a typical seven-day period, out of 1.1 million new sites identified and classified, over 40,000 requests were newly-classified malicious HTTPS sites and 100,000 requests – or approximately 10 per cent – to Command-and-Control HTTPS sites were already infected.
“Currently, encrypted traffic is a huge blind spot for enterprise visibility. The importance of privacy will ensure this trend continues, but investments in network security are largely being wasted when encrypted traffic isn’t being inspected,” said Adrian Sanabria, senior security analyst at 451 Research. “Sophisticated attackers know that evading defences to get command and control traffic or data out of the enterprise is often as simple as using encryption in transit and perhaps a proxy or two. However, the technology to decrypt that traffic is only half the challenge – the other half is to leverage existing network security investments, which is why Blue Coat’s partnering efforts are so important.”
“As our customers increasingly adopt SSL visibility tools, the need for a solid way to manage them is growing. Blue Coat’s SSL visibility solution combined with its ETM Ready Program is an excellent solution that provides enterprises with insight into previously hidden threats,” said Davitt J. Potter senior engineering manager, with Arrow ECS. “As with any technology or tool that grants access to sensitive data, a rock-solid way to audit, manage, and control access to those powerful tools becomes necessary. We’re finding the combination of Gemalto’s SafeNet Luna SP HSM and Blue Coat’s SSL visibility solution makes deployment, management, and the scalability and usability of these tools simpler and more secure.”
“We’re definitely seeing a market need for the management and administration of the security infrastructure as more organizations face increasing SSL/TLS encrypted traffic and need effective protection of the certificates and keys along with it,” said David Etue, vice president, business development, identity & data protection, Gemalto. “Working with Blue Coat and having our industry-leading HSMs certified with the ETM Ready program is a great asset for our customers.”
“Encryption is the tool of choice to protect privacy. But it is also quickly becoming yet another method of attack across the threat landscape,” said Peter Doggart, vice president of business development for Blue Coat. “Our customers are telling us that protecting employee and customer data is critical, but they also need to protect their network and the sky-rocketing use of encryption is hindering their ability to do so. Blue Coat and our ETM Ready partners are working to ensure enterprises can protect both privacy and their networks even as their use of encryption grows.”
About the ETM Ready Program
ETM Ready Program is designed to enable Blue Coat technology partners to build solutions that help combat security threats hidden in encrypted traffic while preserving privacy, policy and regulatory compliance. By integrating their products with the Blue Coat SSL Visibility Appliance, Blue Coat technology partners’ products can offer certified solutions to detect, prevent and eliminate the hidden threats in encrypted traffic. For more Information, please visit https://www.bluecoat.com/partners/etm-ready-certified-partners
What Blue Coat ETM Ready Partners are saying:
“Today’s best practice in network security requires multiple inline security appliances to have visibility into the growing amount of SSL encrypted traffic. Integrating Blue Coat’s SSL visibility appliance with the GigaSECURE security delivery platform, gives our joint customers’ scalable infrastructure that unobtrusively enables security analytics and inspection at scale.” – Johnnie Konstantas, director of security solutions marketing, Gigamon
“Detecting and responding to today’s cyber threats requires pervasive visibility across the entire network, including visibility into encrypted SSL traffic. The combination of Blue Coat’s encrypted traffic management solution and LogRhythm Network Monitor delivers a powerful new way to detect threats concealed within SSL traffic and provides a holistic view of application, network, and user activity, while preserving privacy and regulatory compliance.” – Matthew Winter, Vice President of corporate & business development, LogRhythm
“ManagedMethods is pleased to be part of Blue Coat’s Encrypted Traffic Management Ready Certification Program. With the increasing use of cloud applications and services (SaaS) in the enterprise, it is imperative that IT security organisations gain visibility into their usage. The combination of Blue Coat’s encrypted traffic management appliances and the ManagedMethods’ Cloud Access Monitor product provide customers with a potent new weapon in the fight against Shadow IT. This is crucial today as most SaaS applications use encrypted traffic which creates blind spots that traditional security measures cannot inspect.” -Charlie Sander, CEO, ManagedMethods
“With SSL encrypted traffic seen as an attractive place to hide malware, it’s important for IT to gain visibility for such traffic in order to prevent data leaks and other malicious activity. Symantec Data Loss Prevention (DLP) helps customers identify and protect sensitive information. By integrating with the Blue Coat SSL Visibility Appliance, our customers will now have an additional option to easily identify and monitor sensitive data shared outside of the organisation.” – Nicolas Popp, vice president, information protection, Symantec
“Integrating with Blue Coat’s encrypted traffic management solution enables TopSpin an even better analysis and detection of the attackers’ activities with the Internet and provides a complete picture of the attackers’ activities inside the organisation and outside of the organisation.” – Doron Kolton, CEO, TopSpin Security
“Trend Micro Deep Discovery provides unprecedented visibility throughout a customer’s network to mitigate next generation threats including targeted and zero-day attacks that can be delivered through encrypted communications. Working in concert with Blue Coat’s SSL Visibility Appliance will apply Deep Discovery’s dynamic capability to analyse this traffic and ensure these sophisticated attacks are contained in virtually real time. This, in turn, will provide customers with additional peace of mind without compromising privacy or performance.” – Kevin Simzer, CMO, Trend Micro
