St. Bernard Hardens Appliance with Multi-Layer Anonymizer Defense

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 02/22/09

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St. Bernard Software has added multi-layer anonymizer protection to its iPrism Web Filter appliance. iPrism is designed to detect and guard against Web-based proxy servers, prevent security exploits, and stop users from circumventing filtering technologies.

The new functionality combines URL- and proxy pattern-based blocking, fortified by St. Bernard's iGuard URL classification team. The iGuard team provides a human review and rating of its URL database, which is updated daily so iPrism can identify and block requests for anonymous proxies as they sprout up.

iPrism also detects and blocks all uncategorized sites based on the signature file in the iGuard database, immediately identifying new proxy sites. This pattern-based blocking allows iPrism to recognize attempts to establish proxy tunnels, intercept any connections from taking place, and document efforts to circumvent the filtering technology in its reports.

"We noticed a growing trend among students utilizing anonymizers as a way of bypassing filtering policies," said Larry Seely, IT director at Cornelia Connelly High School. "iPrism's anonymizer defense automatically provides the most up-to-date protection against these sites, alleviating the burden on IT to manually lock this down. St. Bernard's iPrism provides a comprehensive Web filtering solution that tackles this challenge and helps us maintain the educational value of our resources while keeping our network secure."

iPrism's anonymizer defense also features:

• Spoofed SSL, which detects and blocks anonymizer traffic that attempts to spoof secure traffic;
• Dynamic proxy detection, allowing administrators to track proxies such as UltraSurf, Google-Web-accelerator, and http-proxy domains;
• iGuard database to verify pre-qualified Web sites;
• Active domain IP address mapping, to cross-references IP addresses to their corresponding domain, further prohibiting access to illicit sites; and
• Concealed surfing, which reports Web activity by tracking domain names instead of IP addresses.

iPrism comes equipped with anti-virus and anti-spyware as standard features. It also uses deep packet inspection technology to analyze Web traffic, identify suspicious activity, and block access to sites accordingly.