Broadcom’s Chris Newman on Adopting Secure Web Gateway to Improve Network Security

Chris Newman, Cloud Secure Web Gateway product manager at Broadcom, said adopting a secure web gateway, also known as a proxy, could help organizations improve access management and visibility into fragmented networks.

Newman described a proxy as a point of control that serves as an intermediary and determines whether to permit or block access or send a user or device to remote browser isolation and other additional security controls.

“SWG acts as the control point for security and compliance technologies such as threat scanning, RBI, data loss prevention and acceptable-use policies for everything web, for all users,” he wrote in an article published on Carahsoft’s website.

Integrating With Zero Trust Network Access, CASBs

In this piece, the Broadcom executive noted that a secure web gateway could facilitate the integration with zero trust network access platforms and cloud access security brokers, or CASBs, which allow remote access to an agency’s applications based on clearly defined policies.

“That gives agencies the ability to go beyond managed devices—or the endpoints they know about—to secure even unmanaged devices, such as virtual machines, containers, servers and users’ personal devices,” Newman said. 

“The idea is to treat all connections as untrusted by default and force users and devices to prove that they are authorized before allowing access,” he added.

Protection & Inspection Tools Built to Work Together

Newman said Broadcom has supported government agencies through its CASB, file scanning, remote browser isolation, data loss prevention and other capabilities. He noted that such components have been combined through Symantec Cloud Secure Web Gateway, the company’s software-as-a-service offering.

“Furthermore, we have integrated all our protection and inspection technologies in one house, and that means those tools work together, they work at scale, and they work in a stable, mature manner,” he added.