Monday 2 November 2009

Network Security Part 3 Web Proxy.

Web Proxy:

In computer networks, a proxy server is a computer system “Hardware” or an application program “Software” server which services the requests of its clients by forwarding requests to other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource, available from a different server. The proxy server provides the resource by connecting to the specified server and requesting the service on behalf of the client. A proxy server may optionally alter the client's request or the server's response, and sometimes it may serve the request without contacting the specified server. In this case, it would 'cache' the first request to the remote server, so it could save the information for later, and make everything as fast as possible.





Content Filtering Web Proxy:

A content filtering web proxy server provides administrative control over the content that may be relayed through the proxy. It is commonly used in commercial and non-commercial organizations (especially schools) to ensure that Internet usage conforms to acceptable use policy.

Common methods used for content filtering include: URL or DNS blacklists, URL regex filtering, MIME filtering, or content keyword filtering. Some products have been known to employ content analysis techniques to look for traits commonly used by certain types of content providers.

A content filtering proxy will often support user authentication, to control web access. It also usually produces logs, either to give detailed information about the URLs accessed by specific users, or to monitor bandwidth usage statistics. It may also communicate to daemon based and/or ICAP based antivirus software to provide security against virus and other malware by scanning incoming content in real time before it enters the network.



Caching proxy server:

A caching proxy server can reply to service requests without contacting the specified server, by retrieving content saved from a previous request, made by the same client or even other clients. This is called caching. Caching proxies keep local copies of frequently requested resources, allowing large organizations to significantly reduce their upstream bandwidth usage and cost, while significantly increasing performance.


Bluecoat proxy system.

Companies are largely use Blue Coat Web Filter proxy, it is a powerful “on-proxy” web filtering solution, helps enterprises and service providers protect their users and networks from Internet threats and abuse, including spyware, phishing attacks, P2P traffic, IM and streaming traffic, adult content, and many others.

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