Using the Internet to collect and exchange information has become a standard practice for employees, and businesses are increasingly reliant on it. With the continuous rollout of Web 2.0 applications, organizations face the challenge of enjoying the convenience and productivity benefits of the Internet while protecting against inadvertent visits to malicious websites or the installation of malware, which can expose sensitive data or personal information.

According to research from Forcepoint’s Web Security Lab, the number of web pages containing malware is growing rapidly, including mobile apps. Of the identified malicious websites, 77% are legitimate sites that have been compromised and injected with malware or malicious links. Additionally, among the top 100 most popular websites, 70% have been compromised or involved in malicious activity in the past six months, with 39% of these sites hiding programs designed to steal data. This highlights that the web has become one of the largest sources of cybersecurity vulnerabilities today.

Challenges for Enterprise IT

For IT departments, the web is an essential network service that cannot be completely restricted, yet it is difficult to manage. A key challenge is how to minimize the risks of malware and data leakage without compromising the convenience of web access, and how to strike a balance between security and productivity.

For most users, and even some business owners or IT personnel, cybersecurity is often still equated with computer viruses and hacker intrusions. As a result, there are common misconceptions about enterprise web security, such as:

• Misconception 1: “If I avoid visiting adult, gambling, or hacking-related websites and don’t click on suspicious links, I won’t get infected.”
  While this approach used to reduce the likelihood of visiting malicious sites, today attackers exploit vulnerabilities on legitimate websites on a massive scale. Hackers no longer focus on defacing websites to show off their skills; instead, they embed malware or malicious links. The more traffic a compromised website receives, the faster the malware spreads.
• Misconception 2: “Installing a firewall and antivirus software makes me safe from infections.”

The problem is that traditional antivirus relies on identifying threats after an incident occurs—using virus signatures or definitions and updating them to endpoints. There is always a window of vulnerability during which users cannot defend themselves. Modern attacks, delivered via email, websites, and instant messaging, are effectively “real-time,” leaving traditional defenses insufficient.

Today, web access has evolved into a broad application concept, from Web 2.0 to modern mobile apps and cloud services. While the web has become more convenient, it also provides fertile ground for attackers.

“In the past, organizations relied on web filters to block malicious URLs and often combined them with antivirus and firewall architectures to achieve layered defense. However, traditional methods cannot fully address the window of vulnerability, and the real-time, dynamic nature of today’s web presents challenges that conventional approaches struggle to meet.”

Therefore, we offer a comprehensive web security protection solution that balances convenience, productivity, and robust defense:

The primary approach to web security protection is safeguarding users’ web access destinations and online activities. Forcepoint, the industry’s leading web security expert, offers the world’s most comprehensive website classification technology and database. It supports next-generation web environments with high content variability and multilingual capabilities (including Chinese), providing real-time automatic web classification and dynamic website classification to immediately categorize new or unknown sites.

Forcepoint also delivers deep content inspection to defend against next-generation web security threats. Its Web Security protection mechanisms utilize patented technologies, including the advanced Websense ACE classification engine, ThreatSeeker threat analysis, and Malicious Content Stripping, enabling rapid and accurate detection of web pages and websites containing malicious threats.

Additionally, Forcepoint’s Web Security Gateway not only defends against web-based threats but also supports inspection and filtering of HTTPS-encrypted content, as well as protection against advanced persistent threats (APT). It can identify zero-day malware and other malicious activities across the entire attack chain, helping to prevent the latest threats from compromising enterprise systems.

Solution 1: Forcepoint Web Security
Solution 2: Sophos Firewall

The second major impact area of Web Security Risks is Data Leakage (or Data Exfiltration). Given that web services are heavily saturated with data transmission and sharing channels that can be exploited, and since hackers frequently leverage or mimic HTTP/HTTPS traffic for covert operations, Forcepoint introduced Data Security as a second line of defense to address this.

Data Leakage Methods

Common web data leakage scenarios involve users (either intentionally or accidentally) exfiltrating data through channels such as:

• Network Drives
• Cloud Storage (e.g., Google Drive, Dropbox)
• HTTP/FTP/P2P transfers
• Social Networks

In recent Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks, a more insidious method known as “drip-feed” data exposure has been observed, where small, incremental amounts of data are leaked over time to avoid detection.

Solution : Forcepoint Data Security

Traditionally, enterprises primarily established a security firewall (Firewall) for their IT defenses, often supplemented with an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) or an Anti-Virus Gateway (AVG), forming a linear, band-like security perimeter. However, this setup is no longer sufficient to meet the demands of modern Web security.

Sophos UTM & Next-Gen Firewall

Sophos UTM (Unified Threat Management) & Next-Gen Firewall (NGFW) offers a composite Secure Web Gateway, establishing a first layer of deep security defense at the edge of the enterprise’s external connection.

This solution provides immediate and efficient detection for Firewall, IPS, and Anti-Virus against user Web access behavior, and further incorporates Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) capabilities.

Additionally, its Security Web defense mechanism also provides assistance with:

• Malicious Web Filtering
• Web Application Control
• Protection for enterprise Web servers

Solution 1: Forcepoint Web Security
Solution 2: Sophos  Firewall
Solution 3: Forcepoint NGFW

In the past, security relied on URL category databases to block risky website categories, or depended on gateway-level software like anti-virus and IPS to block problematic transmissions. However, these methods are no longer sufficient to meet the demands of modern Web security.

Therefore, an emerging protection mechanism is the new technology of Web Isolation, also known as Remote Browser Isolation (RBI).

Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) has fundamentally changed the landscape of cybersecurity. It is most commonly used within secure network gateways to enable people to safely visit websites, even those compromised by malicious signatures or content. Typically, by using Web Isolation or RBI, concerns about unclassified websites can be eliminated.

Web Isolation technology works by opening an independent container within the isolation platform for the content a user wishes to access—including various web pages, opening different documents, and hyperlinks and attachments in emails. This container allows the active content (such as HTML5, JavaScript, Flash, Java, etc.) present in these web pages or documents to run within the container. Users can utilize the system relying only on standard browser tools, without the need to install any endpoint software, and remain protected by the isolation mechanism.

Solution 1: Forcepoint RBI Module
Solution 2: Menlo Security