Merck Brazil deploys Blue Coat ProxySG and ProxyAV to manage Web usage
(16/04/2008)

Blue Coat Systems, Inc. has announced that Merck Brazil, a division of the leading manufacturer of vaccines and medicines in Latin America, has deployed Blue Coat® ProxySG® and Blue Coat® ProxyAV™ appliances to manage Web usage, accelerate Internet content and applications, protect against malware and enforce policies for employee Web usage.

Blue Coat appliances provide Merck with a unique combination of security, policy control and acceleration, and help ensure compliance with its corporate rules - which is very important for Merck, a company that increasingly relies on the Internet for communication, information and commercial transactions. Visualization of network traffic also allows Merck to effectively control Internet usage in order to comply with rules and regulations established by the corporation.

"We have analyzed and tested several different products, and Blue Coat stood out by providing the broadest functionality, stability and performance, allowing us to create comprehensive policies that could be defined and managed from a central point," said Dalmo Mello, regional IT Infrastructure manager, Merck Brazil. "The Blue Coat appliances also helped us avoid possible risks to our business due to the flexibility in security services deployment."

Blue Coat appliances enable Merck to enforce appropriate controls according to corporate policy, the type of content or application and the individual using it. Malicious content, such as spyware and viruses, can be stopped. Employee Web surfing can be managed according to acceptable use policies, and various Web applications, such as instant messaging (IM) and those using streaming media or peer-to-peer (P2P), can be controlled for bandwidth or acceptability.

Acceptable content and applications are accelerated through use of caching and pipelining. Merck places the security project with Blue Coat in a wider context that includes all the changes the company is going through at the moment to make the Information Technology area "a true business partner".

"With the Blue Coat ProxySG appliances, Merck has the benefit of security and control combined with acceleration to make Internet fast and productive for business use," said Wolfgang González, vice president of sales, Latin America, Blue Coat Systems. "As companies and organizations rely more on the Internet, they can no longer afford a trade-off between security and performance. With Blue Coat appliances, companies no longer have to compromise."