According to Sourcewire, ScanSafe, the global provider of Web Security-as-a-Service, has made public the availability of Anywhere+ which can be considered the first application in the world ever to function software -as-a-service (SaaS) Web security delivering real-time security against malware and enforcement of adequate Internet usage policies for all users surfing the Web no matter what their location is.
Anywhere+ extends protection to all employees using the Internet outside the office; provides real-time scanning and policy control and eliminates costs and complexity of traditional endpoint solutions
It is of utmost importance that in a world which tends to rely more and more on the Internet and considering a continuous growth of the network perimeter, for Web security to reach any location of potential users.
What this release of the patent pending Anywhere+ service ultimately means is the possibility for businesses to ease the extension of their security policy to hotels, airports, distant offices, homes or for that matter anywhere else employees might use their laptops.
The need for such a product couldn’t be more obvious. The number of employees working remotely outside of traditional office hours is increasing. The Office for National Statistics reports over six million Britons to be teleworking from different places outside the office.
There is a new important challenge as well as opportunity now to business security with so many roaming employees. ScanSafe’s survey from December last year indicated that forty per cent of the respondents encountered a security threat consequently to the roaming use of their laptop within the last year.
Dan Nadir, vice president, product strategy, ScanSafe declared that “With Anywhere+ it is finally possible to protect remote users wherever they are working without introducing latency, increased support or other administrative headaches.
It is very frequently that users who surf open to attack while traveling come back with their laptops screaming with malware which could end up very bad for the corporate network in data theft. Unfortunately, there aren’t many solutions available in this area.
There are also other factors that contribute to this current situation such as a widespread false impression that a VPN always offers protection to roaming users from Web threats. Nevertheless, according to the survey most of the time users choose not to use the VPN when surfing the Web remotely, preferring to simply connect to the Internet.
The good news is that Anywhere+ is now available both to already ScanSafe users and corporate that want to improve their current Web security solution by adding roaming security capabilities. The add-on service comes with a starting price of £1.00 per user per month.
A very loyal ScanSafe’s customer, Sumitomo Electric Wiring Systems, has been carrying out tests with Anywhere+ as it is trying to better its Web security for its 300 remote employees. The security solution for roaming workers it had previously used had not succeeded to prevent personnel from connecting to the Internet directly or disregarding corporate Web use policy.
The company’s network administrator, Paul Jennings said that additionally to “extending our corporate security and Internet use policies to roaming workers, Anywhere+ makes our remote access security solution complete because it allows us to extend and enforce our Web use policy and provide protection against malware for all our roaming workers.”
Similarly to all ScanSafe services, Anywhere+ permits easy, centralised managing through ScanCenter – its very accessible Web-based portal for reporting, control and administration. Web filtering settings can be modified with no effort and are active within minutes worldwide, without having to wait for client software to attempt to update itself. Also, reporting data is automatically and constantly combined across internal corporate users and roaming users.
How Anywhere+ functions:
Contrasting with conventional remote security solutions, Anywhere+ is offered as a service. All inbound and outbound Web traffic is visibly readdressed to the nearest scanning datacenter in ScanSafe’s worldwide network which extends from Sydney to San Francisco. Here, its scanning and filtering is done in real-time.
As the scanning of all Web traffic is performed ‘in the cloud,’ Anywhere+ removes the latency, bandwidth clogging and costs resulting from usual backhauling of Web traffic over the corporate VPN to an Internet gateway.
As a SaaS approach, Anywhere+ can be set up pretty quick. It is started through a lightweight driver. Differently from other endpoint clients Anywhere+ needs no 50 MB download or regular updates to stay efficient. Moreover, it does not swallow resources including memory and CPU.
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