Barracuda's Web Filter boasts with new social media controls

"Organisations are realising that employee behaviour on social networks can impact productivity, network performance and even company security," says Martin Tassev, MD at LOOPHOLD Security Distribution. "However, prior security initiatives to simply block inappropriate content and malware are no longer sufficient. As social media becomes more ingrained in the workplace, organisations must focus on how to allow social media while keeping the workplace safe."
The Barracuda Web Filter 6.0 allows administrators to safely allow social media use by regulating it through several new capabilities, including an upgraded application control engine with support for granular policies, Web application monitoring and archiving, and enhanced SSL inspection.

Support for 400 applications

Barracuda Web Filter 6.0 adds support for more than 400 profiled applications beyond the scope of traditional URL or domain filtering. For example, with Barracuda Web Filter 6.0, administrators can allow users in the organisation to login to Facebook to view and post status updates while blocking games, shares and other Facebook applications to protect their networks from viruses and malware.

This upgraded application engine builds on the existing capabilities of the Barracuda Web Filter designed to block applications at a broader level, including Skype, BitTorrent and YouTube for regulating bandwidth usage on workplace networks.

Capturing social media interactions

The Barracuda Web Filter's Web Application Monitoring capabilities integrate with the Barracuda Message Archiver and enable the capture and retention of chat, web-based e-mail and social media interactions for the purpose of archiving, searching and fulfilment of e-Discovery requests. Supported interactions on Facebook include wall posts, comments, messages and chat messages. Supported interactions on Twitter include tweets and direct messages. Other platforms supported by Web Application Monitoring include Yahoo! and Google.

As social media networks have embraced encryption of user sessions, the Barracuda Web Filter 6.0 can decrypt HTTPS traffic that is SSL encrypted when deployed in forward proxy mode. Transparent deployment of this enhanced SSL Inspection feature requires deployment of a trusted root certificate on client web browsers. This capability builds on the existing HTTPS filtering capabilities of the Barracuda Web Filter for inline deployments.