Bloxx moves Down Under to shake-up Web filtering market

A UK-based Web filtering company, Bloxx, is setting up shop in Australia this month competing against a long list of companies already established locally including Websense and Content Keeper Technologies.

Continuing its international expansion, Bloxx is opening a sales office in Brisbane which will be headed by Hadley Weir.

He believes Australia's Web filtering market is currently dominated by the bigger players, especially since Websense acquired Surfcontrol.

"Customers now have a dramatically reduced choice and reseller partners in Australia are disillusioned," Weir said.

As Australia managing director of Bloxx, Weir is confident the company will be successful Down Under describing its Tru-View technology as revolutionary.

The company was listed in the 2007 Deloitte Technology UK Fast 50 and the EMEA Fast 500 for its Web filtering appliance.

Weir said the technology combines the best of content filtering with conventional tools and new intelligient real-time identification methods.

"Tru-View Technology analyses and blocks Web sites quicker and more accurately than other filters which use manual classification and keyword scoring," he said.

"In support of the launch, we are looking to sign up a limited number of top tier resellers and rewards will be excellent for the right partners."

Prior to joining Bloxx, Weir was sales director for Irish-based audit and compliance company PixAlert and he has 14 years experience in IT security.

He has also managed the sales division of Skynet Global and was involved in the first deployment of wireless hotspots across Australian airports.

Weir also worked at Alstoms new IT services division in Sydney.

Bloxx is moving into the Australian market at a time when traditional URL-filtering alone is failing.

A new report from analyst firm Gartner, states that: "A surge in adoption of Web applications and social networking sites has increased malware risk for companies and prompted new acceptable-use policies. The market is demanding a solution that provides not only traditional URL-filtering, but also malicious software (malware) filtering, as well as application control for Web applications such as instant messaging (IM)."

Websense marketing vice president, Leo Cole, said attackers are upping the ante with blended threats, attacks on Web 2.0 applications and information-stealing code.

"Our security researchers discovered - for the first time in history - that the number of legitimate Web sites compromised by attackers has surpassed those purposefully created by attackers," Cole said.

"Traditional security solutions weren't designed with these type of attacks on content in mind. Only Websense has the essential components required for comprehensive content protection."