While it is increasingly preferable (and preferred) to offer your employees unfettered access to web-based resources, it is equally important for organisations to maintain employee productivity and protect them from web-based threat like malware, clickbaits etc. This is where next-generation firewall solution comes into play.

One of the most effective methods of threat management using a firewall is high-performance URL filtering. This involves applying fine-grained policies to control access to web resources by various employees/departments. This allows you to comprehensively monitor and control access to websites based on a wide array of business rules and needs. For example, during work hours, social networks will be accessible to marketing teams but not to finance departments. Outside of business hours, these restrictions may be relaxed. Similarly, access to streaming media (YouTube for example) may not be allowed during work hours, but be allowed otherwise. Using URL filtering in combination with http proxy caching allows you to optimise your web traffic and optimally use your network bandwidth.

These solutions also allow organisations to prevent their employees from accessing (either knowingly or unknowingly) illicit websites. Some examples of such sites are child pornography, gambling, narcotics etc. This is immensely helpful in countries where the CEO can be held criminally liable for any such activity by the employee on the organisation’s network. In addition, it also helps keep the organisation’s resources safe from the malware typically prevalent on such sites.

Additionally, these solutions are backed by a cloud-based infrastructure, offering the following benefits:

  • Requests for classification of websites are aggregated from all over the web, offering a comprehensive knowledge of world-wide web traffic.
  • Any new website is quickly identified, mapped and instantly made available to the next-generation firewall solution.
  • As soon as a website is infected, its information be available immediately. There is no need to wait for category databases to be updated, like in case of antivirus solutions.

The scale of classification information currently available can be estimated by the following numbers::

  • A database of more than 100 million URLs, classified and updated in real-time
  • 65 website categories, out of which
  • 8 categories dedicated exclusively to security (botnets, malware, hacking websites etc.)

This level of granular data enables you to define filtering policies most relevant to your organisation’s business policies and needs.

Solution implemented using: