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For many network administrators, security and insomnia go hand in hand.
After all, threats are omnipresent and attacks can happen at any time, day or
night. Add to that the rapid adoption of Web 2.0 technologies, and it becomes
easy to see how those threats can evolve into something almost impossible to
manage. The answer to stopping those threats doesn’t come from a lifetime
supply of No-Doze, but from advanced security technologies that can evolve as
rapidly as the threat environment.

The key here is adaptability—the capability of the security solution to adapt
to the latest techniques employed fast enough to make a difference and without
hindering authorized use and communications. Unlike the traditional approach of
throwing hardware at the problem, Websense is looking to bring anti-malware,
intrusion prevention and Web security technology to the enterprise via a
service. While some may question the validity of hosted service, which protects
a network from beyond the edge, Websense looks to quell those doubts by
incorporating the latest theories and security techniques into its dynamic
protection network, ThreatSeeker.

In a nutshell, the ThreatSeeker Network enables Websense Hosted Security Services to employ advanced analytics consisting of rules, signatures, heuristics and
application behaviors, which detect and block proxy avoidance, hacking sites,
adult content, botnets, keyloggers, phishing attacks, spyware and many other
types of unsafe content. All of that is aimed at protecting enterprises of more
than 500 users from data loss prevention, Web 2.0 threats, malware or most any
other threat.

Websense Hosted Security Services takes a different approach than many of the other SAAS (software-as-a-service)
security services on the market. Most competing products focus on only a single
area of Web security, such as e-mail, content filtering or encryption.
Websense, on the other hand, is aiming to offer the whole ball of wax by
incorporating a broad range of security technologies into a single service
offering.

Of course, protecting a 500-plus user enterprise is far different from
protecting a single-location small business. By moving security into a hosted
solution, Websense is able to address security for multiple sites, departments
and networks all from a common point and, at the same time, eliminate many
layers of security hardware.

There are many advantages to that approach. For example, the cost of security
hardware can be reduced significantly. Also, security updates can be applied immediately
across the enterprise, ensuring consistency and eliminating overlooked
locations. Management also becomes much easier—a single console can manage
security for numerous locations, updates can be better automated, alerts are
more encompassing and enterprise-level reports can be created quickly.