Blue Coat: the most complete and accurate Content Control

WebFilter from Blue Coat is the most complete and accurate internet content filtering solution available, protecting employees and organizations from internet misuse and abuse. It helps companies to improve productivity, reduce legal liability, and save internet bandwidth by allowing them to manage, monitor and report on employee internet activity through a web-based service that is accessible anytime and anywhere. This service model minimizes the need of expensive IT hardware and ongoing maintenance by putting the technology and file management burden onto WebFilter at Blue Coat’s data centers. The unique architecture provides real-time ratings on new and dynamically generated websites resulting in the most accurate, cost effective solution on the market.

WebFilter from Blue Coat is available as an option with CacheMARA and BorderMARA.
The following diagrams illustrate how Blue Coat's WebFilter is a generation ahead of mainstream traditional filtering solutions

Content Control from Blue Coat Diagram

Traditional Internet Filtering Systems

BlueCoat, the world's leading provider of web-based content filtering

Blue Coat's WebFilter uses a dynamic database which is superior to competing static databases. Traditional filtering requires the customer to download a static list of URLs. This list becomes outdated as soon as it is downloaded. New websites are created continuously and dynamic sites change constantly, therefore if the customer does not have access to continuous and instant updates, the static database will be insufficient on reception. WebFilter is capable of handling dynamic content due to its proprietary WebPulse community which continously updates the database with signatures for new URLs, content and malware. Furthermore, traditional content control filters per destination IP and hostname are, not being able to distinguish different content within the same host. WebFilter from Blue Coat is much more granular and filters per domain, host directories and files.

Dynamic Real-Time Rating (DRTR) is a proprietary technology, which is able to categorize web pages instantly. Any new website that isn't already in Blue Coat's database is analyzed in real-time.
If the DRTR mechanism is able to rate the content with a high level of confidence, it is automatically pushed to the master database to incorporate the new content. Blue Coats service points, running the WebFilter service, are updated instantly to deliver the new updates to all customers. If the DRTR service isn't able to categorize the content automatically in one of the existing categories, the content is manually reviewed by humans, who are able to categorize it properly. This system assures that Blue Coat's database is the most accurate and relevant database in the industry. While competitors may brag about the size of their database, they conceal the fact, that most of this data may be outdated or irrelevant, which is not going to deliver effective results to customers.

End-users instantly benefit from Blue Coat's growing database instantly. With DRTR and Blue Coat's manual rating system, end-users will benefit from the activity of all of Blue Coat's customers. End-users that access unrated URLs will automatically direct those URLs through WebFilter to Blue Coat's service points, where they will become rated, thus other customers that access those sites later, will be served the rating instantly and accurately from the database. The database will also grow bigger and more accurate as more and more customers use the system. Customers all over the world are using WebFilter and thus, taking part of building the largest, most accurate database available in the industry.

Reporting allows customers to receive "Violation Reporting", that will provide company-wide to user-specific reports on the sites that end-users tried to access and were blocked. This is a feature of the system and will require no additional hardware. Reports are web-based and real-time. They can be viewed by administrators anytime and from any location.

Your benefits of using MARA Systems unique integration of the Blue Coat WebFilter

  • Mara Systems' cache appliances are capable of caching ratings from Blue Coat's WebFilter. With this unique technique, customers will build their own relevant, local database of commonly used URLs. This will dramatically increase the performance of the filtering solution. By having this feature in the customer's network, wasted bandwidth will decrease due to the content filtering. Additionally, the performance of the network will increase due to the caching. There is no faster, more accurate solution available.
  • Custom Policy Configuration: Mara Sytems' integration with WebFilter service from Blue Coat allows the end-user to have the following features: Time-of-day filtering, override lists to create custom policies or override WebFilter from Blue Coat's ratings, and the ability to create multiple policies by user, IP address, groups, and/or locations.
  • Total Cost of Ownership: With MARA Systems' integrated solutions, customers will not have to spend extra money on additional hardware, premium group categories, or IT staff to make sure databases are downloaded properly. Our solution combines extensive caching along with Blue Coat's superior content filtering engine which only requires a minimal support from your staff. Once the system is up and working, your IT staff can focus on other issues rather than downloading databases. None of the competitors can offer this fully featured, total solution at Mara Systems' price.