ScanSafe Anywhere⁺

Overview:

Anywhere+ is ScanSafe’s Web security-as-a-service for real-time protection and policy enforcement for your roaming employees. With Anywhere+ it is finally possible to protect your roaming employees wherever they are working – at home, at a client office, in an airport lounge or hotel hotspot.

The number of employees who work outside the traditional office is rapidly increasing and perhaps surprisingly now constitutes the majority of workers for many businesses. A 2008 IDC study on mobile workers estimated that 75 percent of the U.S. workforce will be mobile by the end of 2011†. This trend, coupled with the need for ‘always-on’ connectivity, means that the network boundary is now ‘elastic’ and the traditional fixed network perimeter is becoming irrelevant.

Roaming employees now connect to the Internet from a variety of locations - from their homes and client offices to airport lounges and hotel hotspots. This increased level of connectivity allows employees to work regardless of location. The clear benefits of employees working outside the office do, however, come with increased risks due to lower levels of security. As a result, cyber criminals are now increasingly using malware to target laptop users in order to gain access to private and confidential information that can be sold, in many cases, for a hug profit. Research shows the laptop computers with business information store an average of $524,000 worth of sensitive data. This problem is magnified when machines that are infected while remote will then spread tha malware throughout the network when the employee returns to the office - drastically increasing the volume of private data that can be stolen.

Traditionally, It administrator have little or no control over Web content accessed by roaming employees. This situation is not helped by the fact the roaming employees are five times more likely to access inappropriate content on the road than in the office. Even more worrying is that roaming employees only use VPNs 17% of their browsing time. How are they controlled and protected the other 83% of the time?

Legacy solutions to these problems include extending Web security software and appliances out the endpoints through client agents and forcing all Web traffic back through the on-premise solution. This increases cost and management overheads and can require backhauling, which results in latency and increased bandwidth costs.

Why Anywhere⁺?

• Enable security policy to be enforced enterprise-wide, including remote workers
• Protect resources from undesirable and malicious Web content
• Improve productivity by limiting time spent on recreational surfing
• Centralized reporting for all users regardless of location

A Security Perimeter Anywhere You Want It To Be

Anywhere⁺ extends the real-time protection and policy enforcement of ScanSafe Web Security to roaming employees. With Anywhere⁺ it is finally possible to protect roaming employees wherever they are working and however they access the Internet.

Anywhere⁺ is delivered as a service for complete security, reduced complexity and simplified user management. Anywhere⁺ removes the performance issues and bandwidth congestion associated with backhauling Web traffic over the corporate VPN, so the security perimeter is now anywhere you want it to be.

Real-time Malware Scanning and Policy Enforcement

The Anywhere⁺ ensures that roaming and remote employees no longer act as an open bridge into the internal network by stopping all Web threats in the cloud wherever the user is working.

All Web traffic, including SSL encrypted communications flow to the ScanSafe datacenters for real-time scanning to detect inappropriate or malicious content. This is done using encryption, leading to improved security over public networks. With Anywhere+, log information is securely in the hands of IT, not on a file on the local PC. Reporting data is automatically and continuously aggregated across internal corporate users and roaming users. Policy changes can be implemented immediately – no need to wait for client software to try to update itself on its own schedule. Policy changes are active within seconds, globally.

Prevent Confidential Data Loss

Coupled with granular inbound web policy, Anywhere⁺ enables an integrated outbound policy to help prevent leaks of confidential or personal data to the Web, which in turn limits the potential exposure to bad press, lawsuits and financial penalties. This policy can be constructed around multiple factors including preconfigured filters for social security numbers etc, file type, file matches, keywords and regular expressions.

Transparent Operation and Silent Install

Anywhere⁺ is deployed through a lightweight driver which forwards Web traffic to the ScanSafe security scanning infrastructure. ScanSafe datacenters are located all over the world from San Francisco to Sydney ensuring that end-users always have optimized performance as well as award-winning security and filtering. Anywhere⁺ supports a silent installation and is easily deployed using industry standard mechanisms such as GPO or Microsoft SMS.

Features and Benefits:

Benefits

• Patent-pending technology for transparent operation 
• Works with existing VPN, desktop security clients, and internal proxies
• Seamless roaming between different network interfaces including wired, wireless, and 3G
• SSL-encryption of all Web traffic improves security of inbound and outbound Web traffic over public networks
• Password protection at the client-side of the service to prevent unauthorized tampering
• Detect On LAN Automatic Disabling

Features

• Complete integration into defined global security policy
• Automatically selects optimal ScanSafe data center
• “Last mile” encryption ensures security of data sent to ScanSafe data center
• Supports centralized, silent deployment

How It Work:

The Anywhere+ service extends ScanSafe’s award-winning Web malware scanning and Web filtering services to your roaming and remote employees ensuring they no longer act as an open bridge into your internal network. Stop all threats in the cloud wherever the user.

A simple configuration change routes your traffic through our upstream operations centers. Your traffic is scanned in real time, enforcing usage policies and blocking Web viruses, spyware, trojans, phishing, IM threats and inappropriate content before they reach your network. All Web traffic flowing to our datacenters is SSL-encrypted leading to improved security over public networks.

With Anywhere+, log information is securely in your hands, not on a file on the local PC, Reporting data is automatically and continuously aggregated across internal corporate users and roaming users.
Policy changes can be implemented immediately – no need to wait for client software to try to update itself on its own schedule. Policy changes are active within seconds, globally.

FAQs:

What savings will I get from using Anywhere⁺?
Depending on how your network is set up, you should see substantial bandwidth savings from not having to backhaul traffic via a VPN. This is on top of the time saved through cleaning up remote user’s laptops and managing endpoint clients.

How is it priced?
Anywhere⁺ is available for existing ScanSafe users as well as businesses looking to add roaming security capabilities to their existing Web security solution.  It is an add-on service. Pricing depends on service bundle and volume but starts at $1.00 per user per month.  Customers pay for our regular office security services (Web malware scanning, Web filtering) PLUS an additional monthly per user fee for the number of outside users with the additional Anywhere+ security service.

I am currently happy with my existing security solution for my office workers but would like to add Anywhere⁺ just for my roaming users. Is that possible?
Yes, Anywhere⁺  can be bought separately. It is also very easy to add the remaining office workers at a later date.

How can I evaluate Anywhere+?
Click on the “free evaluation” link, fill out your details and a member of Anywhere⁺ team will contact you shortly after to set up a free 30 day evaluation. There is no obligation to buy and no cost.

If I protect my users with Anywhere⁺ does it mean I can remove my desktop AV?
No. ScanSafe’s services protect unencrypted Web traffic only. Any other method of entry onto a laptop, for example by email, USB stick or network share are not protected, hence users still need local malware detection.

Does my VPN have to be in split or full tunnel mode?
Anywhere⁺ requires you deploy your VPN in split tunnel mode. All external Web traffic (both HTTP and HTTPS) should be allowed to go directly to the internet (where Anywhere⁺ will redirect it to the ScanSafe scanning infrastructure and apply the correct policies).

What VPNs does Anywhere⁺ work with?
Anywhere+ works with all major VPNs including:

• Aventail
• Cisco
• Checkpoint
• Juniper
• Microsoft
• Nortel
• Watchguard

How is Anywhere⁺ deployed to my end-users?
Anywhere⁺ is a single .MSI (Microsoft Standard Installer) file.  It supports a silent installation and is supported by just about every software distribution mechanism available.

Can my users disable Anywhere⁺?
Anywhere+ is tamper-resistant. Without knowing the password for the service the user cannot disable the service.

Documentation:

Download the ScanSafe Anywhere Plus Datasheet (PDF).