Multiple Category Ratings

While a blended defense remains critical for the Secure Web Gateway, today we're going to focus on the URL rating technology used by most proxies. It's one component of the many defenses offered by proxy vendors, and probably the basis for most proxy vendor's security solution. The reason for this is that a URL database of category ratings can be stored on-box, offering quick access to a rating for a specific web site. (When a URL isn't in the on-box database, the vendor has to go to a real-time rating system and an anti-malware scanning engine, both of which can cause increased latency or delays for loading a web page).

With today's increasingly complex web pages, it's getting harder to rate a web page into a single category, so it's important to for the secure web gateway to recognize multiple categories for a single URL. A great example of this is Facebook. While a base Facebook URL (www.facebook.com) is recognized as a Social Networking site, pages within Facebook may need to be categorized as both Social Networking and a second, third or even four different category. For example, the many games available in Facebook, such as Farmville and Mafia Wars, should be rated as both Social Networking as well as Games. A dual rating can help an IT administrator allow Social Networking category while blocking Games to prevent wasted time at work, and allow the use of Social Media in promoting a company's products and services.

Unfortunately not all proxy vendors have this capability to support Web 2.0 sites, so be sure to check with your vendor to make sure they offer this important basic tool to help secure your web access.