What Is a Secure Web Gateway?

What Is a SWG in Cybersecurity?

A secure web gateway (SWG) is a security solution that prevents unsecured internet traffic from entering an organization’s internal network. It’s used by enterprises to protect employees and users from accessing or being infected by malicious websites and web traffic, internet-borne viruses, malware, and other cyberthreats. It also helps to ensure regulatory compliance.

According to Gartner, a secure web gateway must, at a minimum, include URL filtering, malicious code detection and filtering, and application controls for popular cloud applications such as Microsoft 365. More recently, Gartner identified CASB as a critical component of a security architecture based on the secure access service edge (SASE) framework, which we’ll get to later.

What Does a SWG Do?

A SWG is designed to block access to or from malicious websites and links. It enforces granular use policies and stops threats from accessing web applications by acting as a security gateway, and it does so by filtering web and internet traffic at the application level.

Is a Firewall a SWG?

Firewalls and SWGs perform similar tasks, but they’re not one and the same. Firewalls review the contents of incoming packets and compare their findings against a signature of known threats at the network level only. SWGs operate at the application level, and they can block or allow connections or keywords according to an organization’s web use policy.

Is a Web Gateway a Proxy?

Web gateways and proxies have key differences. A proxy server and a gateway both route traffic from a network to the internet, but a proxy server filters which connections are allowed, while a gateway doesn't do any filtering. In this sense, a gateway more closely resembles a door to get to the internet, and a proxy server a wall that bars the inside of the network from being exposed to the internet.