Social networking has grown increasingly popular in the past few years, and experts estimate that 64 million people worldwide use the technology for both personal and work-related purposes. Rather than rail against these technologies, many employers are accepting and even advocating the use of social networking sites and other Web 2.0 tools within their organizations as a forum for business communications and collaboration amongst colleagues.

While these innovations bring many benefits, they also increase risk of viruses, spyware, and other threats infiltrating the corporate network.

Just such a challenge was faced by one of the UK's largest employers, BT, as it sought to implement a solution that would enable its staff to have access to applications such as Webmail, social networking sites and instant messenger without compromising the security of its network or the capacity of its Internet gateway. They also required a solution that would tackle the challenge of increased traffic across the network, by accelerating the delivery of content and applications across the Web and reducing overall bandwidth consumption.

Check out this case study to learn how Blue Coat solutions provided BT with a multi-layered approach to security.