What is SWG?
Secure Web Gateway
A cloud or on-premises proxy that inspects all web-bound traffic for malware, enforces URL filtering policies, and prevents data exfiltration over HTTP/HTTPS.
A Secure Web Gateway sits inline between users and the internet, intercepting HTTP/HTTPS requests for inspection. Core capabilities include URL categorization and filtering, TLS decryption and re-encryption for encrypted traffic inspection, anti-malware scanning, and application-level controls that can distinguish between, say, uploading to a personal Dropbox versus a corporate SharePoint.
In a SASE/SSE architecture, the SWG runs in the provider's PoPs rather than on-premises hardware. Users connect via an endpoint agent, PAC file, or GRE/IPsec tunnel. The SWG evaluates each request against policy: is the URL category allowed, does the file hash match known malware, does the content contain sensitive data patterns? This is where SWG intersects with DLP; many vendors unify both inspections in the same proxy pass.
The operational complexity of SWG centers on TLS inspection. Decrypting and re-inspecting encrypted traffic requires deploying a trusted root CA to all managed endpoints, handling certificate pinning exceptions for applications that reject interception, and managing performance overhead. Organizations that skip TLS inspection leave an enormous blind spot, as the majority of web traffic is encrypted.
The security half of SASE, delivering SWG, CASB, ZTNA, and DLP as cloud-delivered services without the SD-WAN networking component.
The process of decrypting TLS-encrypted traffic at a proxy, inspecting the plaintext content for threats and policy violations, and re-encrypting it before forwarding to the destination.
A set of technologies that detect and prevent unauthorized transmission of sensitive data by inspecting content at rest, in motion, and in use against predefined and custom data patterns.
A technology that executes web content in a remote, disposable environment and streams only safe rendered output to the user's browser, preventing web-borne threats from reaching the endpoint.
A security layer that analyzes and filters DNS queries and responses to block connections to malicious domains, prevent DNS-based data exfiltration, and disrupt command-and-control communications.
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