See Everything: New Russian SWG Inspects Every HTTP Request
Web security gateways provide content filtering while protecting organizations against phishing attacks and malicious websites.
Monitoring what employees upload to and download from the internet now requires more than a traditional firewall. Organizations increasingly need specialized Secure Web Gateway (SWG) platforms. Unlike conventional network security tools, SWGs operate at the application layer, understanding not only where traffic originates and where it is headed, but also the content carried inside each request.
Russian cybersecurity developer UserGate, known for its next-generation firewall portfolio, has announced the commercial launch of UserGate SecureWebGateway (uSWG). The product is available in two deployment models – as a hardware appliance and as a virtual appliance. That combination is unique in the Russian market, giving customers the flexibility to choose the option that best fits their infrastructure.
Access Under Control
At the core of uSWG is UserGate's in-house technology stack: a proprietary Linux operating system, a high-performance web proxy, a reverse proxy and a streaming antivirus engine. The entire code base is owned and maintained by UserGate. One of the platform's strongest capabilities is its URL categorization engine, which contains more than 170 million internet addresses organized into 88 categories. That enables organizations to create granular access policies – restricting social media for one department while allowing another to reach the online resources it needs.
Performance is equally important for large enterprises. The hardware lineup includes the D500, E1000, E3000 and F8000 platforms. They deliver throughput ranging from 3.6 Gbps to 7.7 Gbps on EMIX traffic with SSL inspection enabled while supporting between 680 and 1,020 concurrent HTTPS connections. In practice, security operates transparently, filtering all inbound and outbound traffic without slowing day-to-day business operations. By the end of the year, UserGate plans to add entry-level models from the C series, expanding the product line to meet the needs of a broader range of customers.
What Are Employees Feeding to GPT?
Demand for SWG platforms is being driven by several industry trends. The first is import substitution. Large Russian organizations, particularly in the financial and oil and gas sectors, have long relied on products from global vendors such as Forcepoint SWG, Blue Coat and Palo Alto Networks. They now need domestic alternatives that can deliver comparable protection and inspection capabilities.
The second trend is the rapid adoption of generative AI. The volume of information employees submit to AI services has grown dramatically over the past year, creating new risks of sensitive data exposure. Organizations want visibility into that activity. They want to know what information employees are feeding into ChatGPT and similar services. UserGate addresses that challenge by integrating uSWG with the enterprise edition of Yandex Browser. Corporate web traffic is then routed exclusively through the trusted browser.
Securing Cloud Access
Russia's market for specialized web gateways has been developing for years, and UserGate faces strong competition. One example is Solar Group, which has actively promoted its Solarweb Proxy platform. It was originally positioned as a solution for granular internet access management, phishing prevention and integration with other cybersecurity systems.
Solarweb Proxy later received long-awaited certification from FSTEC, Russia's Federal Service for Technical and Export Control. That certification opened the door to government agencies and operators of critical information infrastructure (CII). For UserGate, obtaining comparable FSTEC certification at Trust Level 4 represents a critical milestone in competing within this highly regulated segment.
UserGate first presented its upcoming SWG platform in detail at the OpenConf 2026 conference, highlighting AI-service monitoring and browser integration. By the time uSWG reached commercial availability, however, Russia's SWG market had evolved into a competitive landscape where vendors are defining distinct market positions.
Waiting for Certification
The future of uSWG will depend on several factors. The most important is FSTEC certification. Beyond that, long-term success will hinge on performance and integration capabilities. UserGate reports impressive benchmark results, but only production deployments will demonstrate how effectively the platform performs deep traffic inspection when thousands of employees simultaneously upload and download data.
Alexandra Golovina, uSWG Product Development Manager, emphasizes: "Controlling access to web resources is critically important for every organization. uSWG does not complicate an existing security architecture, but it reduces the risk of cyberattacks and data leakage at one of the busiest and most vulnerable points in the enterprise environment."
Looking ahead, the product will continue to evolve in response to new AI use cases and emerging risks associated with data leakage through AI services. The developers are already building the technical foundation needed to respond quickly as those threats continue to evolve.
