Blue Coat Pushes into Data Loss Prevention

Although Blue Coat has existing relationships with a number of DLP providers that it plans to maintain, the company today is also rolling out its own family of DLP appliances.

According to Bob Hansmann, Blue Coat senior product marketing manager, the company is trying to reduce the hassle factor of DLP by allowing IT organizations to manage DLP, WAN optimization and network bandwidth under a common framework.

Hansmann added that the Blue Coat appliance is designed to be a DLP solution that can be implemented in a day. Blue Coat, he added, has been careful to keep the initial discovery phase of the DLP process relatively simple so as not to overwhelm the IT organization with large numbers of false positive reports.

Instead, the appliance can be aimed at a few specific topics that can be expanded over time. The important thing to remember in DLP, said Hansmann, is you can’t fingerprint everything in the enterprise.

Pricing for the Blue Coat DLP appliances starts at $12,000.