How works URL filtering?

[AnonymousM]

There is no documentation about and I want to know more because we need some like this to improve our firewall policies in a customer.

Thanks.

[samantha_lynn]

Happy to help, I just wanted to let you know that while I was looking for documentation on this I was informed that the entirety of the URL filtering feature has not been implemented in the HiveManager GUI yet, that should be coming in the next release. Some of the configuration options are available now, but not all. I just didn't want you to get confused if you run in to some walls in your testing. You might want to wait until the next update to test the feature fully.

[AnonymousM]

Hello Sam,

Thank you for the answer, I will test this feature.

Thanks.

[samantha_lynn · Accepted solution]

URL filtering lets us block or allow certain categories of websites based on organizational policies. For example we could block the "Shoppingl" category, which would block shopping websites. If you wanted to allow select shopping sites, you could whitelist these and still block the rest of the shopping sites.

This feature allows us to:

• Enforce security on internet connects by managing what http or https request are permitted.
• Block URLs by URL category, block URLs by certain URL patterns, and permit URLs from the whitelist.
• Decide when (schedule), where (which routers), and form whom (global or by user profile) to restrict or allow certain URL categories or specific addresses.  
• Return a blocked notification including a reason for the denial.
• Proxy traffic to a remote "websense", "Barracuda"

Some other things to keep in mind:

• URL filtering takes effect after firewall rules, so if traffic is denied in the firewall, then the URL filter will not see that traffic at all.
• URL filtering applies to ingress QoS, but will not apply to egress QoS.
• local URL filtering and remote URL filtering cannot be used at the same time.