Websense Launches New Appliance

Websense, a well known vendor in the web filtering space announced their first appliance this week, the V10000. Websense's URL filtering database has been available on a number of proxy servers, including Blue Coat's ProxySG as well as in a standalone software package available for Windows and Unix platforms.

Some insight on why Websense chose to go the appliance route from Channel Insider:

Websense, which recently completed a rebranding of the company, is trying to turn perceptions that it’s simply a Web filtering company that denies access to gross amounts of content and Websites to a technology provider that protects users without totally impeding Web access. The V10000 moves the company in that direction by providing security that strips or blocks malicious content from popular social networking sites—such as Facebook or Twitter—without impeding access or functionality.

The appliance, powered by two quad-core Intel Xeon processors and 16GB of DDR2 memory, sits at the gateway and provides application-layer inspection of all Web, peer-to-peer and instant messaging traffic. The appliance provides integrated Web proxy and cache management, giving users the ability to monitor and inspect SSL-encrypted traffic. Appliance management is through a Web-based console that enables granular policy configuration and compliance reporting.

The question here is whether Websense is too late to the game with a market that already has plenty of appliances, even ones that already run Websense software. A new product is always one that IT departments are wary of, so Websense's ability to succeed in a new market will remain to be seen.