Telecommunications giant AT&T announced on Tuesday that it is offering a new cloud-based security solution designed to protect customers against malware and malicious websites while offering security policy control across enterprise, web, social and mobile networks.
Without having to deploy on-site equipment, customers can enforce consistent global security policies across wired, roaming, and mobile environments, AT&T said.
Called AT&T Cloud Web Security, the solution can accommodate businesses of any size and is powered by Blue Coat Systems’ Security Policy and Enforcement Center, which protects against web and network-based threats and helps prevent data loss.
“Reduced budgets, staff/skill shortages, and growing compliance and regulatory demands are forcing IT organizations to do more with less,” AT&T said. “Cloud-based security solutions from AT&T will allow customers to get more value from their IT staff to secure enterprise and employee assets.”
According to AT&T, the cloud-based solution provides the following benefits:
• Reduced cost and complexity – As a user-based subscription, AT&T Cloud Web Security enables customers to pay only for what they need and scale their web threat protection on-demand, eliminating the need to buy, deploy and maintain on-site hardware or software.
• Real-time, dynamic malware protection – AT&T Cloud WSS uses a combination of real-time analysis, malware scanning and shared threat intelligence from 75 million users to block suspicious and malicious web content. By blocking communications to command and control servers, the service also enables IT to quickly identify and quarantine infected systems.
• Customized web application controls – Customers can protect their network while enabling employees to use the applications that allow them to be more productive. Customers can set policies to manage application use based on a wide range of criteria, including user, group, applications, operations, postings, and media transfer controls.
• Powerful, intuitive policy management and reporting – Proxy and policy technologies allow administrators to quickly and easily enforce broad-based or detailed policies for network access and use – from small groups to hundreds of thousands of users – all in one simple configuration.
“Six months ago, we told our customers we’d deliver better end-to-end protection, making major improvements to our network-based defense, cloud security, secure mobile business, and threat management solutions,” said Andy Daudelin, VP, Security Services, AT&T Business Solutions. “Since then, we announced significant enhancements in each of these areas, but we’re not stopping here. The launch of this new on-demand cloud security solution is an important milestone in our commitment to deliver improved security, analytics, and threat visibility to our customers.”