Joy Global Shielded From Web 2.0 Hazards

By Rohan Parker

The announcement was made this month by Secure Computing Corporation that the gateway security company would be providing Secure Web(tm) to Joy Global Inc., the mining equipment manufacturer and distributor.

Secure Web, previously known as Webwasher, will allow Joy Global to protect against threats designed with Web 2.0 in mind.

Web 2.0 is the phase of the internet in which we are now, and it refers to the greater capacity on the net for communication and sharing information in a wider variety of forms, such as blogs, wikis and folksonomies.

Secure Web will also allow the company to greatly increase flexibility with Web filtration and monitoring for employee use, as well as boost network security for inbound and outbound data.

Prior to using Secure Web, Joy Global had used security software provided by Blue Coat, however this system couldn’t work for the company in the long run, because it was a signature-based anti-virus solution which, with the advances in Web 2.0, leaves a network open to malware and active code exploits.

Secure Web acts in an entirely different fashion, because it is based on Secure Computing Company’s Trusted Source(tm) which, in real-time, monitors the behaviour of applications on the internet, and based on that behaviour assigns ‘reputation scores’.

Secure Web then analyzes all data going to and from the network, and based on the ‘reputation scores’ protects the network from any viruses, spyware, and malware, that may be attempting to gain access.

Because of the fashion in which Trusted Source evaluates in real-time, programs can be blocked long before a signature from it is accessible.

IT security manager for Joy Global, Adam Lance, said the company was extremely pleased with the options provided by the new software, and how much of an advance it was, in terms of security and malleability.

Another aspect of the Secure Web software is that it allows the company to delegate specific levels of net access to specific people, rather than having to establish a list of accessible websites which acted for all employees.

Joy Global’s managers used to have to go through each IP, which user that IP belonged to, and what they were using the internet for manually; now all that information can be gathered automatically into a report produced by the program.

Secure Web also allows for a single sign on, as no secondary authentication is needed to access the internet.

Joy Global has saved themselves time and money through Secure Web, as it offers multi-capability software, on little in the way of hardware.

Lance spoke about the time freed up for his team, as they no longer need to manually add website after website to the list of ‘allowed’ sites, which has lead to cost reductions and more work being completed on other IT projects.