SUNNYVALE, Calif., October 13, 2008 - Blue Coat Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: BCSI), the leader in WAN Application Delivery and Secure Web Gateway, today announced that Blue Coat^® ProxySG^® appliances support the industry's first secure communications channel between an Internet gateway security appliance and a data loss prevention (DLP) solution. With support for Secure Internet Content Adaptation Protocol (S-ICAP), Blue Coat ProxySG appliances allow enterprises to centrally locate and manage data access and usage policies to protect against sensitive data leaving the network, simplifying network management and reducing capital costs.

To provide enterprises with the security they need to transmit and analyze sensitive data that will travel across the Wide Area Network (WAN), Blue Coat partners with the industry's leading data loss prevention vendors: Code Green Networks, McAfee, RSA, Vericept and Websense. The DLP solutions from these partners inspect HTTP, HTTPS and FTP traffic to ensure that sensitive or protected data remains within the corporate network. Blue Coat ProxySG appliances provide the ability to decrypt SSL-traffic and send it through a secure channel to the DLP solutions that then inspect the traffic.

"Security and application acceleration functionality is increasingly located in branch offices to enable direct Internet access, making the enforcement of data usage policies more challenging and costly," said Bethany Mayer, senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing at Blue Coat. "With the addition of S-ICAP to Blue Coat Proxy SG appliances, enterprises can deploy a centrally managed data loss prevention solution that inspects and analyzes traffic over a secure communications link that is isolated from other traffic on the network."

Blue Coat ProxySG appliances support a dedicated communications link to the DLP solution, creating a private connection in which sensitive data is cordoned off from the rest of the network. This solution provides secure communications for traditional deployments in which ProxySG appliances and DLP appliances reside in the same location. Support for S-ICAP now extends that secure inspection model to the branch office, allowing enterprises to fully realize the bandwidth reduction advantages of direct Internet access without compromising the security of sensitive data.

"To cost effectively deploy a comprehensive data loss prevention solution, an enterprise needs to be able to inspect traffic from the branch office at a central location without exposing sensitive data," said Brian Burke, Program Director, Security Products at IDC at IDC. "With a secure link between the branch office and corporate headquarters, enterprises can eliminate the need to deploy DLP solutions at branch offices while still ensuring compliance with data protection regulations."

S-ICAP support also enables organizations to securely and reliably deliver applications to users by offloading specific content to dedicated appliances, such as DLP appliances, thereby increasing network and application performance.

In addition to enabling the security of sensitive data over the WAN, ProxySG appliances also optimize WAN traffic to accelerate remote applications and file access and protect direct Internet connections from malicious threats.