Monthly Archives: December 2010

Happy Holidays! Wavecrest’s Holiday Hours

We want to end this year by wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We hope you have a wonderful holiday!

In addition, we want to remind you of Wavecrest’s holiday hours.  Wavecrest Computing offices are closed from December 25, 2010 – January 2, 2011.  Our offices will re-open on Monday, January 3, 2011 at 8am.

Should you need support or customer service during this time, limited email support will be available. You may contact either Sales at sales@wavecrest.net or Support at support@wavecrest.net, and they will get back to you as soon as possible.  You may also visit the Wavecrest Support Forum and post your questions there.

Remember to Set Block Policies for New Custom Categories

When you create a custom category at the Advanced Settings — Category Setup — Custom Categories screen, the custom category is automatically set to ‘allow’ in all of your block policies.  So anybody will be able to access the sites listed in the newly created custom category.  If you want to block the sites in this category for some or all filter policies, be sure to go to the Advanced Settings — Filter Settings — Block Web Categories screen and set the policies to ‘block’.

Managing Web Application Authentication Problems with Wavecrest Proxy Products

In order to obtain usernames for filtering and/or reporting purposes in CyBlock Proxy, Cyfin Proxy, or CyBlock Appliance, authentication must be enabled. An issue that arises with authentication is that there are some Web apps and URLs/Domains that do not respond to the authentication request properly.  Because of this, in versions 6.2.0 and 8.2.0 we added the Authentication Manager in CyBlock Proxy, Cyfin Proxy and the CyBlock Appliance.

The Authentication Manager helps prevent these issues by automatically detecting the disruptions, identifying the failed applications, and employing automatic authentication-bypass techniques (when authentication is enabled in Moderate mode). This allows users to bypass proxy authentication (not the proxy server) with those web sites and web applications that do not properly respond to the proxy authentication request.  An example of this is your offensive line in a football game.  Just like your offensive line creates a hole for the running back to run through, bypass authentication opens a hole in the proxy so that the request can go through. The request will bypass authentication but not the proxy.

To learn more about proxy authentication and the Authentication Manager, read our document “Managing Web Application Authentication Problems” and see your product manual for specific instructions on fully utilizing the Authentication Manager.