DATASHEET

BrightCloud® Web Classification and Web
Reputation Services
Real-time web threat intelligence accurately assesses URL and domain risk andhelps enforce web policies
Overview•Web threat intelligence enables security solution providers and enterprises
to give internet users access to reputable websites while blocking accessto malicious and inappropriate sites•Website classification and reputation analysis protect users from malware,phishing, ransomware, and advanced attacks, while helping enforce
compliant internet usage policies that reduce legal liabilities, improve
employee productivity and protect children•

The BrightCloud® Web Classification and Web Reputation Services
track more than 1 billion domains and 43 billion URLs, organize theminto 86 categories, and assign them reputation scores based on multiple
contextual and behavioral factors•

BrightCloud Threat Intelligence provides accurate and up-to-date
intelligence by collecting data on more than 87 billion unique URL visits
per year, analyzing data with sixth-generation machine learning models,and using innovative technologies to counter threat actor tactics such as
encrypting web traffic, dynamically generating web content, and hidingmalicious activities on legitimate websites and behind proxy servers

BrightCloudClassificationStats• 1 billion domains and 43+
billion URLs classified• 86 site categories, including
high-risk categories• 45+ languages

Goal #1: Protect Employees, Corporate Guests, andConsumers
Employees and guests on company networks routinely visit URLs that expose
them to phishing attacks, keyloggers, botnets, ransomware and spyware,
drive-by malware, and other threats. But identifying dangerous URLs isn’t
easy. Threat actors evade detection by rapidly cycling through new domainsand URLs, dynamically generating malicious content on web pages that werepreviously safe, compromising legitimate websites, by creating sites that shift
rapidly between malicious and benign. They also encrypt traffic (in 2022, about
half of phishing sites used HTTPS) and hide behind proxy and geolocation
services (70% of malicious URLs did so in 2022). Traditional, static, list-based
internet protection services simply cannot keep up.

Goal #2: Reduce Legal Risk and Productivity Losses
Enterprises create internet usage policies in part to avoid legal liability whenemployees abuse web access to create a hostile work environment for theirpeers or violate compliance regulations. They also seek to control inappropriate
web activities that affect productivity or waste corporate computing resources
and network bandwidth. Enforcing these policies – without interfering withlegitimate work or offending employees – requires granular, accurate, up-todate URL categorization and risk analysis.
1

BrightCloud Web Classification Service
By providing the most up-to-date and accurate website
intelligence, the BrightCloud Web Classification Service
significantly improves visibility into all internet usage andhelps organizations mitigate online threats. Additionally, withthe superior coverage and visibility offered by this service,
security solution providers and their customers can address
goals related to reducing legal liabilities around web usage
and compliance, improving employee productivity, andreduce inappropriate use of enterprise computing resources.
With its 86 website categories, the BrightCloud Web
Classification Service provides the granular insight customers
require. Security solution providers can use these to help
their customers accurately identify websites that propagate
malware, spam, spyware, adware, and phishing attacks, aswell as botnets and websites that attempt to bypass URL
filtering with proxy servers and anonymizers.
Enterprises can also enforce internet access policies
related to productivity (e.g., websites for online games,
shopping, entertainment, news, sports, and hobbies), to IT
resources (e.g., streaming media, peer-to-peer, personal datastorage), to sensitive and controversial topics (e.g., drugs,
pornography, gambling, weapons, illegal activities), and more.

BrightCloud Web Reputation Service
The BrightCloud® Web Reputation Service delivers upto-date risk scores for websites as users visit them. This
enables security solution partners to add a dynamic layer ofprotection to their customers’ web defenses by accurately
assessing the risk posed when opening a URL, independentof its site category.
The Web Reputation Service complements the Web
Classification Service by offering an additional lens, throughwhich a site can be evaluated as a potential threat. In addition
to category, it uses site history, age, rank, location, networks,links, real-time performance, and other contextual andbehavioral trend data to determine a site’s Web Reputation
Index (WRI). WRI scores range from 1 to 100, with tiers split
into Trustworthy, Low Risk, Moderate Risk, Suspicious andHigh Risk.
The service also provides domain-level reputation scoresbased on the domain’s threat history, age, popularity,underlying URLs, and other factors. These reputation tiers
enable enterprises to finely tune their security settings basedon their risk tolerance and to proactively prevent attacks
by limiting the risk of end user exposure to inappropriate ormalicious web content.

Domain Safety ScoreThe Domain Safety Score is available as an add-on to theWeb Classification and Web Reputation Services. It canhelp address the issue HTTPS protocols may present, inwhich categorization at the domain level may not reflect thecontent of individual web pages within the domain. Domain

safety scores help network and gateway devices that cannot
decrypt SSL/TLS traffic or DNS solutions which only see
FQDNs make better security filtering decisions in situations
with minimal page-level visibility.

BrightCloud Platform
The BrightCloud® Web Classification and Web Reputation
Services are powered by the BrightCloud Platform. Data on
new and known sites is continuously created and refreshed,
every 5 minutes ensuring that site categorizations andreputation scores are always as current as possible.
Whenever a user visits an uncategorized site, it is dynamicallycrawled, classified and scored. Each website’s score andclassification are checked and adjusted over time.
The BrightCloud Platform is enhanced by threat hunting
techniques, enabling accurate detection and classificationof malicious URLs. BrightCloud uses a proprietary and fully
automated deep crawling infrastructure for threat hunting,which is combined with contextual data to accurately
categorize thousands of URLs per second. The proactive andmethodical parsing of massive quantities of network data
enables the BrightCloud Platform to uncover significantly
more malware URLs and to determine that, on average, 91%of the new malicious URLs discovered each day are zeroday sites. With its highly sophisticated combination of global
threat sensors, sixth-generation machine learning models,and multilingual human oversight, the BrightCloud Platform
continuously maintains and expands its knowledge of threats
and other website classifications, delivering maximum value
for our partners.

BrightCloud® Web Classification and Web
Reputation Services in Action
Integrating BrightCloud Web Classification and Web
Reputation Services into security solutions not only provides
an additional layer of web filtering protection from sites thathost malware or spyware, but it also enables security solution
providers to offer far more granular security management.
The services enhance our partners’ solutions by increasing
real-time protection against known malicious threats.
In addition, Web Classification and Web Reputation Services
can help:•Improve network speed by blocking unwanted andmalicious content on integration partner gateways•

Power parental URL classification within a consumer
internet security solution to help parents protect children
against harmful and unwanted content•

Enhance or power URL filtering on secure web gateways,
SSE/SASE services, next-generation firewalls and IPS
systems, offering greater visibility and improved control
over web browsing

2

Partner Benefits

Flexible Partner Integration Options

Differentiate yourself from your competition

Web Classification and Web Reputation Services integrate
seamlessly with existing security solutions through theintuitive BrightCloud software development kit (SDK), REST
services, and an API. Multiple BrightCloud services can be
integrated via the same SDK. Three hosting models areavailable, allowing partners to select the integration anddeployment type best suited to customer needs:

1.

Enable compliance without impacting user experience2.

Protect with real-time and contextual intelligencevisibility based on the foundation of AI and historicalthreat insights

3.

Minimize customer risk by responding to evolving threats
with faster speed and contextual accuracy

Hosted:•Leverage BrightCloud® Threat Intelligence•Take advantage of the visibility provided through morethan 95 million real-world sensors via the world’s mostpowerful cloud-based security analysis platform

Local Database:•No impact on user experience•Protect end users from malicious sites using real-time
intelligence in a way that won’t impact their onlineexperience•

Enforce internet use polices with greater accuracy•

Improve network performance with granularclassification categories

All URL queries not already cached are sent over theinternet to the BrightCloud Platform for classification andscoring.
A database is downloaded locally and fully updated once
per day, with regular incremental updates providing thelatest intelligence between full updates.

Hybrid Model:•URL queries are first examined in a locally cacheddatabase and forwarded to the BrightCloud Platform only
if the URL category and WRI are not stored there.

Contact us to learn more
BrightCloud.com
Phone: +1 800 870 8102

OpenText Cybersecurity provides comprehensive security solutions for companies and partners of all sizes. From prevention, detection and response to recovery, investigation and compliance,
our unified end-to-end platform helps customers build cyber resilience via a holistic security portfolio. Powered by actionable insights from our real-time and contextual threat intelligence,
OpenText Cybersecurity customers benefit from high efficacy products, a compliant experience and simplified security to help manage business risk. DS_012224
Copyright © 2024 Open Text Corporation. All rights reserved.
3