Blue Coat Systems

Blue Coat Systems Inc.

Type	Privately held company
Industry	Network Security
Predecessor	CacheFlow
Founded	1996
Headquarters	Sunnyvale, California, United States
Key people	Greg Clark (CEO) Michael Fey, (President and COO)
Products	ProxySG, Advance Threat Protection (ATP) System, SSL Visibility Appliance, MACH5, K9 Web Protection, PacketShaper, CacheFlow
Revenue	US$496M (FY 2010)
Operating income	US$39.3M (FY 2010)
Net income	US$42.9M (FY 2010)
Total assets	US$696M (FY 2010)
Total equity	US$386M (FY 2010)
Number of employees	more than 1,400 (as of 2014)
Parent	Bain Capital
Website	http://www.bluecoat.com/

Blue Coat Systems Inc., formerly CacheFlow, is a Sunnyvale, California-based provider of security and networking solutions. In December 2011, Blue Coat was acquired by private equity investment firm Thoma Bravo for $1.3 billion and began operating as a privately held company. In March 2015, Thoma Bravo sold Blue Coat to private equity firm Bain Capital for $2.4 billion.

History

Blue Coat Systems was founded in 1996 as CacheFlow, with the original headquarters in Redmond, Washington. In 1999, Rick Kimball and Jay Hoag of Technology Crossover Ventures invested in CacheFlow.

Blue Coat provides products to more than 15,000 customers worldwide. It identifies itself as a business assurance technology specialist. Blue Coat products are primarily used by enterprises, schools, hospitals, governments, and public agencies to block malware and malicious threats, control access to applications and content in the workplace, surveillance, censorship, and improve the performance of network applications. Usually used in conjunction with a firewall rather than in lieu of same.

On December 9, 2011, Blue Coat agreed to be acquired by Thoma Bravo for $1.3 billion. With the closing of the transaction, Blue Coat stock was delisted from NASDAQ and it was no longer a publicly traded company. On February 6, 2015 the Wall Street Journal reported that an attempt to sell Blue Coat to defense contractor Raytheon had failed, and Thoma Bravo was restarting the sales process. On March 10, 2015, private equity firm Thoma Bravo sold Blue Coat to private equity firm Bain Capital for $2.4 billion.

Products

• Security & Policy Enforcement
  • ProxySG (SWG), a proxy or web security gateway hardware/virtual appliance for content filtering, authentication, caching, ICAP relay
  • Content Analysis System (CAS), appliance with anti-virus/anti-malware scanning, thumbprint object whitelisting, and static code analysis for use with proxy appliances
  • Malware Analysis Appliance (MAA), sandboxing and virtualization appliance for detection and analysis of unknown threats and files
  • SSL Visibility Appliance (SSL-V), SSL decryption via man-in-the-middle attacks to identify threats
  • Security Analytics Platform (ATP), full packet capture and analysis to identify and respond to network threats
  • Web Security Service (WSS), cloud-based web security platform for mobile devices featuring SWG & CAS appliances-as-a-service
  • Mail Threat Defense (MTD), appliance with malware scanning and application whitelisting for SMTP mail
  • Data Loss Prevention (DLP), appliance with malware scanning and application whitelisting for SMTP mail
  • Content Access Security Broker (CASB), network security solution to tokenize and encrypt data for storage in the cloud

• Network Performance Solutions
  • MACH5 (M5), WANOp to accelerate internal and external applications for remote offices or distributed employees
  • PacketShaper (PS), Content-aware visibility and control over network and applications
  • CacheFlow (CF), caching solutions for Service Provider (ISP) and mobile network operators.

• Administration & Management Tools
  • Management Center (MC), central control panel with access to configure security assets, synchronize policy, and send administrative alerts
  • Reporter (REP), access log collector and tool to produce automated reports and event correlation
  • Intelligence Center (IC), PacketShaper specific control panel to collect data and perform network performance reporting

• Blade Network Chassis for Firewalls / Routing
  • X-Series (Crossbeam), Scalable network security platform that supports virtualized third-party security applications

• Personal Security
  • K9 Web Protection, free to use protection for use as a parental control and to filter Internet browsing.

Acquisitions

In 2000, Blue Coat acquired Entera for its streaming technologies. The deal was valued at $170 million.

Following its entry into the security market, Blue Coat acquired several companies to build additional functionality into its product portfolio. From 2003-2006, Blue Coat acquired three companies: Anti-virus appliance vendor Ositis Software, Inc. for $7.1 million, URL filtering vendor Cerberian for $17.5 million and Permeo Technologies for its SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) VPN appliance.

As Blue Coat moved into the WAN optimization market, it shifted its acquisition focus to companies with caching and performance technologies. In 2006, Blue Coat acquired the NetCache business from NetApp. In 2008, Blue Coat acquired Packeteer, a bandwidth management company, for $268 million. In 2010, Blue Coat acquired S7 Software Solutions, a provider of software migration products and services.

Beginning in 2012, Blue Coat refocused its acquisitions on expanding its product portfolio into adjacent security markets. In December 2012, Blue Coat acquired Crossbeam Systems, maker of a scalable network security platform that can virtualize network security applications from third-party security software vendors (including McAfee, Sourcefire, Check Point, and Imperva). In May 2013, Blue Coat acquired SSL technology from Netronome. Also in May, Blue Coat acquired Solera Networks, a maker of security analytics products that help businesses detect and resolve threats already on the network.

In December 2013, Blue Coat acquired Oslo based Norman Shark, a provider of threat discovery and malware analysis solutions for enterprises, service providers and government.

On July 30, 2015 Blue Coat announced it had acquired Perspecsys as a key part of its Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) offering for an estimated to be $180-200M.

November 9, 2015, Blue Coat acquired cloud security company Elastica, Inc. for $280 million further broadening its CASB portfolio.

Controversy

In October 2011 it was reported that the U.S. government was looking into claims made by Telecomix that the Syrian government is using the company's products in order to censor the internet. The hacktivist group released 54 GB of log data alleged to have been taken from seven Blue Coat web gateway appliances that depict search terms, including "Israel" and "proxy", that were blocked in the country using the appliances. Blue Coat later acknowledged their systems were being used within Syria, but assert the equipment was sold to intermediaries in Dubai, which they believed was destined for an Iraqi governmental agency, not the Syrian regime. Despite the systems consistently sending "heartbeat" pings directly back to Blue Coat, they claim to not monitor their logs to identify from which country an appliance is communicating. Blue Coat further announced they would halt providing updates, support and other services for systems operating within Syria.

In April 2013, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) announced a $2.8 million civil settlement with Computerlinks FZCO for violations of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) related to the transfer to Syria of Blue Coat products. The penalty was the maximum allowed. According to the BIS, Computerlinks FZCO provided Blue Coat with false end user information. Computerlinks FZCO knew that the items were destined for end users in Syria but stated that the end users for the items were the Iraqi Ministry of Telecom or the Afghan Internet service provider Liwalnet.

On March 12, 2013, Reporters Without Borders named Blue Coat Systems as one of five "Corporate Enemies of the Internet" for selling products that have been or are being used by governments to violate human rights and freedom of information. Claims that Blue Coat equipment has been sold to the governments of Bahrain, Burma (Myanmar), China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela are unsubstantiated. Blue Coat has consistently denied these claims, asserting that it respects internationally recognized rights to privacy and freedom of expression, and does not condone any government’s use of its products to abuse Internet privacy or freedom of expression. On July 8, 2013, The Washington Post reported on a Citizen Lab study, accusing the governments of Sudan and Iran of misusing Blue Coat products.

In September 2014, Buzzfeed reported that Egypt has contracted with an Egyptian-based company and has begun monitoring online communications within Egypt. The article referred to the Egyptian company as a 'sister company.' Buzzfeed published a correction the next day, with a statement from Blue Coat: "See Egypt is a Blue Coat reseller, but is not otherwise affiliated with Blue Coat. See Egypt has assured us that they have not bid or resold Blue Coat products to the Egyptian government for any social network monitoring operation... Blue Coat sells its products to end users through more than 2,000 resellers worldwide. We require our resellers to adhere to the same legal requirements and ethical standards to which we hold ourselves."

In March 2015, Forbes reported that Blue Coat had pressured a security researcher, Raphaël Rigo, into canceling his talk at SyScan '15. Raphaël has stated that the talk did not contain any information about vulnerabilities on the ProxySG platform.

See also

• List of parental control software

External links

• Blue Coat Archives - Investigative reports published by The Citizen Lab.