Blue Coat Systems Inc. is a network security and network management company based in Sunnyvale

Sunnyvale, California

Sunnyvale is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is one of the major cities that make up the Silicon Valley located in the San Francisco Bay Area...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, United States.
It identifies itself as an application delivery network

Application delivery network

An Application Delivery Network is a suite of technologies that, when deployed together, provide application availability, security, visibility, and acceleration. Gartner defines Application Delivery Networking as the combination of WAN optimization and Application Delivery Controllers...

 (ADN) specialist. It was previously known as CacheFlow.

List of products

• K9 Web Proxy, Free to use proxy for use as a parental control and to filter internet browsing.

• ProxySG, Multi-part enterprise software, designed for companies with a large number of computers. The BlueCoat ProxyClient portion of the software is currently in use by the New South Wales
  New South Wales
  New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
  
   Department of Education and Training as filtering software for the government netbook rollout.

Acquisitions

In 2006, Blue Coat acquired NetCache

NetCache

NetCache is a former web cache software product which was owned and developed by NetApp between 1997 and 2006, and a hardware product family incorporating the NetCache software.-History:...

 from NetApp.

In 2008, Blue Coat acquired Packeteer

Packeteer

Packeteer , founded in 1996 by Robert Packer and Brett Galloway, was an I.T. company based in Cupertino, California listed on the NASDAQ. Networking appliances focus on Application Traffic Management and optimization for wide area networks. They held at least 40 patents for various network...

, a networking management company.

In 2010, Blue Coat acquired S7 Software Solutions, a provider of software migration products and services.

Involvement in Syria

In October 2011 it was reported that the US government is looking into claims made by Telecomix

Telecomix

Telecomix is a decentralized cluster of net activists, committed to the freedom of expression. Telecomix is a name used by both WeRebuild and Telecomix. WeRebuild is a collaborative project used to propose and discuss laws as well as to collect information about politics and politicians. The...

 that the Syrian government is using the company's products in order to restrict internet access. The hacktivist group released 54Gb of log data alleged to have been taken from seven Blue Coat web gateway appliances. This showed that search terms including 'Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

'Burma and 'proxy

Proxy

Proxy may refer to:* Proxy abuse , abuse committed on behalf of somebody else* Proxy bullying , bullying committed on behalf of somebody else...

' were blocked in the country using the appliances.
Blue Coat has denied these allegations and says that it is possible that their equipment could be acquired via the grey market

Grey market

A grey market or gray market also known as parallel market is the trade of a commodity through distribution channels which, while legal, are unofficial, unauthorized, or unintended by the original manufacturer...

 or on eBay

EBay

eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...

.