Bluecoat

Blue Coat Systems, Inc. was a cybersecurity and network management company founded in 1996 by Michael Malcolm, Joe Pruskowski, and Doug Crow. Initially established as CacheFlow, Inc. in Redmond, Washington, the firm's original focus was on developing cache appliances to accelerate website performance by storing frequently accessed data. The venture was started with $1 million in seed money from angel investors. Michael Malcolm had previously founded Network Appliance, Inc., a network storage company, while Joe Pruskowski, who provided some of CacheFlow's start-up capital, had founded Interconnections, a connectivity software company where Doug Crow also worked.

The company's trajectory shifted from web caching to internet security. In 2002, CacheFlow rebranded as Blue Coat Systems, a name chosen to suggest a protective guard, and launched its first security appliance, the SG800. This hardware was designed to sit behind corporate firewalls to inspect and filter web traffic for malicious content. The business model targeted large companies and internet service providers, offering a suite of hardware, software, and services. Its product portfolio included secure web gateways, wide area network (WAN) optimization, advanced threat protection, malware analysis, and encrypted traffic management.

Blue Coat's journey involved significant corporate milestones, including numerous acquisitions to bolster its portfolio. Key acquisitions included Cerberian for URL filtering, Solera Networks for big data security, and Elastica for cloud security. The company's ownership also changed hands multiple times. In 2011, it was taken private by Thoma Bravo for $1.3 billion. Subsequently, Bain Capital acquired Blue Coat for $2.4 billion in 2015. The final chapter for Blue Coat as an independent entity came in August 2016, when it was acquired by Symantec for approximately $4.65 billion. Following the acquisition, Blue Coat's CEO, Greg Clark, was appointed CEO of Symantec. The integration aimed to combine Symantec's endpoint threat data with Blue Coat's network and cloud security capabilities. In 2019, Broadcom acquired Symantec's Enterprise Security business, including the former Blue Coat assets, for $10.7 billion, which now operates as the Symantec Enterprise division of Broadcom.

Keywords: Blue Coat Systems, CacheFlow, cybersecurity, network management, web security gateway, WAN optimization, advanced threat protection, secure web gateway, cloud security, network security, content filtering, data loss prevention, Symantec, Broadcom, Michael Malcolm, enterprise security, threat intelligence, network forensics, CASB, SSL visibility, proxy appliance