New version of SmartFilter

Secure Computing Corp. had announced new version of SmartFilter - url-filtering product. In new version was integrated TrustedSource technology, that improve quality of checking, by using feedback from installed products, that also integrate this technology.

New product for content-filtering in Web 2.0 world

Week ago Websense unveils new, sixth version of their data leak prevention product - Websense Content Protection Suite. In new version, was extended functions of data classification, that is very useful for sites, that actively use Web 2.0 technologies - content syndication, dynamic page generation, etc.
By using this product, Websense confirm conclusions from the Gartner's report on Content filtering and data loss prevention. Acquisition of Port Authority made a positive influence on product line of Websense.

Google will active player?

Today Google had announced the Safe Browsing API, that allow external developers to use database of phishing & malware resources. As example, they show plugin for Firefox web-browser, that check addresses against this database.
Such active deployment of their technologies, could make Google very serious player on the market of content-filtering and information security. Companies, that sell url categorization databases, may loss part of their income.
It will be interesting to implement plugin, that will use this API in open-source projects, such as, Squid or Dansguardian.

Google start to work in information security branch

Several days ago Google had acquired a startup, that provide solution for malware detection. To reflect works in this branch, was opened a new blog - Google Online Security Blog..
Entering of web-search companies to the market of information security, could has a big impact for the development of new content filtering systems - from using collected information to form a URLs databases and/or databases for online data categorization, to development of new methods of data filtering.

New image spam method

Secure Computing point in article, that spammers has a new method for deploying spam - instead of putting image directly in mail message, their upload images to the well-known photo hosting sites, and put in mail message only link to the spam picture.
This technique is too hard to detect, and currently nobody can to solve this problem. Only way to fight with this approach - detect networks of compromised computers, and block all messages from them

new product for data loss prevention

On the market of data loss prevention appear a new product fromMcAfee Inc. - McAfee Data Loss Prevention.
I need to mentionm that this product control both network data (email,P2P, IM, Skype, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP) - with centralized proxy-server, and desktop data (Wi-Fi, USB, CD, DVD, printers, fax and removable devices) - with special desktop agent. Agents and proxy server could be installed separately, depending on the organization needs.
Main platform for the products - Windows. All gathered data are stored in the MS SQL Server.

Acquitions is continue?

Had found in news, that Websense had announced, that it intended to acquire SurfControl.
Number of players at the content security market continue to decrease - Who will acquired next?

About information leakage prevention

The Gartner company had published very interesting report about market of content monitoring and filtering/data loss prevention products. Gartner point, that currently this market is small, but it should grow up to $120-150 million in current year.
Currently in this branch (by the version of Gartner), there are 3 leading companies - Websense (after acquiring of PortAuthority), Vontu and Vericept. Many providers of content filtering solutions (Clearswift, Secure Computing, etc.) was excluded from the analysis, as their products doesn't has a required functions - absence of data collection and static analysis, limited capabilities for the filtering of outgoing traffic, no common subsystem for defining and controlling filtering policies.
It's interesting to mention, that many of things, described in this report - collecting and classification of information, linguistic analysis, etc, already was described by me as the things, that will needed for future development of the content filtering systems. I'll continue analysis of data, and will write about the results in this blog.

about notes in blog

I want to mention, that i also has some notes about content filtering in my personal blog. They are marked with Content Filtering label. But i'll try in future may avaialable only in this journal, or provide a copy of the notes

My article about content filtering trends & techniques

Today i had uploaded to site my article (in russian) about content filtering trends & techniques, that was published in October 2006 JetInfo Magazine. Article is available here. I hope, that i make translation of article to English in near future.
I had also uploaded earlier article about web-filtering and our product for it, that also was published at JetInfo, and available from their site.

New Acquisition of Cisco

Yesterday Cisco had reported, that it'll acquire a company Reactivity, that sell a XML-oriented appliances. Interesting thing is that, these solutions could play several roles - xml-data filtering and transformation, provide additional shield for xml-based services, etc.
With this acquisition, Cisco will open for itself a new rapidly grown market of EII- & SOA-oriented products.

New version of WebWasher

Secure Computing had announced a new version of WebWasher product - 6.5. It also released a new version of Sidewinder - 7.0.
Both product included Real-time Reputation Scores, that allow users of both products to filter not only by categories of sites, but also with reputation rank, that is updated in real-time, and allow to detect and propagate knowledge about sites, that has malicious code

i'm back ;-)

After long time offline, due my moving to Germany, i'm now online and shall continue to post a news about content filtering

cisco buy a e-mail filtering firm

News reports that Cisco had buy a Ironport, a company that work in branch of e-mail filtering and spyware controlling.

new blog about content filtering

I had opened a new blog about content filtering. Now it is in Russian. You can found it here.

stopping the image spam

Tumbleweed had announced yesterday a new technology to fight the spam, that going as an image. They call this technology "Adaptive Image Filtering", and use combination of wavelet transformation with fuzzy matching.
This is looks interesting, but i need to test this technology to say about results

web-filtering in web 2.0 env

Introduction of Web 2.0 technologies - Ajax, etc. is headache for developers of Web-filtering products. Information in such web applications smeared between different connections, and sometimes, we can't analyze data properly.
Now i think about developing a new mechanisms for filtering of this applications (many of them are web-mail, chats, etc., that could lead to information leakage). Currently i hold in head blured image of possible approach, but still doesn't have a clear idea.

information interception

last time, many russian customers (and also customers from other countries) ask us about solutions to intercept internet traffic (web, mail, im, voip). Some of them also want to use this system together with usual phones interception systems.
As i know, in Russia exists some systems, that implement this in some way. But no one do interception of all types of traffic. And we, also trying to play in this game - we has several approaches to this, all based on out MailBoss product, combined with different sniffers and dissectors for various protocols, that produce mail like messages and send them into MailBoss, that do text & datatype detection, and process it with different filtering rules.
But interception of full traffic, has different disadvantages - we need to store anormal amount in information, and we can't use usual relational database to do this. So, currently i thinking about implementing something like data storage, used by web search systems.

Content filtering vendors consolidation?

Looking back to the summer's time, i think that security products vendors are started big consolidation process. What we'll have from this process - improved products, that cover all aspects of content-filtering and security, or not? Or they just to trying increase their market share?
I hope, that they go first way, not second ;-)
But i also hope, that not only market share will main decision for customers, and also will select products by they functionality

WebBoss again

We had started development of a new version of our WebBoss (aka SKVT) software. In this version we'll provide following features:
- conditions on HTTP commands, quota's and much more ;-)
- integration with ISS & NetStar URL databases
- authentification of users by IP & MAC addresses
- storing POST's data in database archive
- replace objects with given data
- new web-based interface with heavy use of Ajax
We has too little time to implement this (until the end of the year), but we'll do this!