Overview:
Today, the Internet is an enormous resource for
organizations, facilitating communication and offering easy
access to an enormous wealth of information. At the same
time, Internet access can present a major productivity and
legal risk. IDC estimates that close to 40 percent of a
corporation's Internet traffic is non-business related —
representing a real and significant drain to both employee
productivity and network resources. In addition, with an
estimated 10 billion webpages today (growing at close to 30
percent annually), unregulated browsing inevitably results
in acceptable use policy violations — exposing companies to
serious legal liabilities.
Cisco IronPort URL Filters™ uniquely combine a
high-performance scanning engine with the industry's
broadest Web database to provide a fast and accurate content
filtering solution. A key component of the Cisco IronPort
acceptable use policy framework on the Cisco IronPort
S-Series™, Cisco IronPort URL Filters rapidly
scan employee browsing requests and evaluate them against
corporate-specific policies — leveraging a highly accurate
database of scored websites. By preventing employees from
accessing sites that violate policies, organizations can now
harness the benefits of the Internet while minimizing the
associated productivity, resource and legal risks.
The Cisco IronPort S-Series is the only solution to
combine Cisco IronPort URL Filters with Cisco
IronPort Web Reputation Filters™ and the Cisco
IronPort Anti-Malware System™ to provide a single,
integrated solution that ensures that a corporation's Web
traffic is accurately scanned for both acceptable use
violations and security threats.
Features:
Accuracy
Powered by one of the industry's largest Web
databases, Cisco IronPort URL Filters
provide administrators with over 50 content categories and
more than 20 million websites (corresponding to over 3.5
billion webpages), across 70 languages and 200 countries.
The highest quality database drives
Cisco IronPort URL Filters. This database is sourced
through automated Web crawling and classification
technologies, combined with the human oversight provided by
a global team of professional researchers. Periodic,
automated ageing out of unused domains and sites, along with
daily updates of millions of new URLs, helps maintain the
industry's highest quality Web filtering database.
Broad international coverage ensures
that Cisco IronPort URL Filters can accurately
block websites, regardless of where the destination URL
points. Today, an increasing number of websites hosting
inappropriate content—adult, gaming, gambling and more—are
set up using international domains to thwart URL filters.
Granular classification of websites
means greater flexibility for organizations in defining and
enforcing acceptable use policies. Support for unlimited
custom categories (based on IP addresses, subnets, CIDR
ranges, URLs, domains and regular expressions) provide
additional agility in responding to violations.
Automatic, incremental Web database updates
add more than 100,000 new sites and 10 million new URLs
weekly to ensure ongoing accuracy. Administrators configure
the update schedule to check for new rules as frequently
every five minutes.
Pre-defined and unlimited custom URL
categories provide granularity, flexibility and control in
implementing enterprise policies.
Policy control
Powerful and flexible authentication
ensures seamless integration with corporate environments.
Administrators can create policies based on existing
LDAP-based or Active Directory-based directory structures.
Single sign-on capabilities provide a seamless end-user
experience while surfing the Web. Administrators can also
create authentication exemptions based on source or
destination traffic profiles.
Granular policy creation using Cisco
IronPort Web Security Manager™ allows administrators to
create and manage policies on a per-user and per-group basis
— thereby providing tremendous flexibility and control.
Cisco IronPort Web Security Manager enables automatic
sync-up with existing authentication directories to provide
a list of active groups. This enables administrators to
further refine pre-existing LDAP-based or Active
Directory-based groups. Administrators can define groups
using network segments, IP addresses, subnet or CIDR ranges,
as well as combine multiple network segments or separate
groups into a single unit.
Consolidated policy management with
Cisco IronPort Web Security Manager unifies security
policies implemented across logical business groups. This
tool is flexible and easy-to-use, allowing administrators to
manage URL filtering policies from a single GUI.
Comprehensive application, object and protocol
filtering enables administrators to configure
per-user and per-group controls, which apply to all HTTP and
HTTPS traffic. Administrators can choose to block or allow
applications such as instant messenger (IM) or Skype traffic
tunneled through HTTP. Additionally, object filtering (based
on "true type") accurately recognizes objects to restrict
object and file downloads that present security and/or
compliance risks. Warn/continue pages can also be
implemented for soft blocking of URL categories, enabling
organizations to educate users on corporate acceptable use
and security policies.
Customized and localized notifications
automatically alert end-users to policy violations that
impact their Web browsing activity. Administrators choose
system-determined notifications across more than 25 trigger
events or redirect to a separate customizable internal
policy page. The ability to customize allows administrators
to maximize the educational opportunity of a blocked Web
request. End-user notifications can be selected in ten
different languages, to ensure compliance with local
regulations and business requirements. Available languages
include English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Korean,
Portuguese, Thai, Traditional Chinese and Simplified
Chinese.
Visibility
Easy-to-understand reports provide
extensive information on overall Web traffic. At-a-glance
reports indicate a corporation's current Web traffic usage,
with more granular reports detailing top resources in use,
on a per-user and per-category basis. Reports assist in
identifying the top users within the network that comply or
violate corporate acceptable use policy. Reports also
provide detailed and summary information on bandwidth saved
as a result of URL filtering. Administrators can use
pre-defined reports or develop custom reports and
notifications.
Understand at-a-glance the Web traffic
blocked versus allowed, on a per-category basis.
Extensive logging lets companies track
all Web traffic, benign and threat-related. Standard log
formats include Apache, Squid or Squid-detailed—along with
the ability to specify custom log formats, consistent with
corporate logging policies. Administrators can enable or
disable log subscriptions, or set log rollover and size
limits, based on log types.
Comprehensive alerting, included with
every Cisco IronPort S-Series appliance, supports
Cisco IronPort URL Filters. Administrators can set
up individual alert subscriptions, based on severity levels.
Alerts are calibrated in three categories: informational,
warning and critical. This provides administrators with
clear visibility into the application and enables them to
take appropriate and timely action, if required.
Benefits:
Maintain Focus on Core Business Activities
The Internet provides nearly unlimited distraction
opportunities. Cisco IronPort URL Filters allow
organizations to implement corporate-specific policies to
keep employees focused on core business activities using
granular, user and group-based policies that are applied
dynamically. In addition, it allows organizations to
maintain better control over resource costs, such as network
bandwidth and IT staff time.
Control Legal Liabilities By instituting
appropriate Web usage guidelines, corporations using
Cisco IronPort URL Filters can improve compliance —
eliminating inappropriate Web traffic, reducing inroads for
illegal phone-home activity that steals mission-critical and
confidential data from within the network, and providing a
concrete implementation of critical corporate acceptable use
policies.
Ensure Accuracy Cisco IronPort URL
Filters leverage the industry's leading URL database in
terms of quantity, quality and breadth. Automated,
incremental updates ensure the ongoing accuracy of the
database while eliminating the need for manual intervention.
Comprehensive Visibility Cisco
IronPort Web Security Monitor™ reports help
administrators quickly identify and investigate issues.
Real-time reports help locate and track issues as they
occur. Historical reports allow administrators to observe
trends and report on efficacy and Return on Investment
(ROI). These actionable reports minimize the time wasted on
forensics — letting administrators focus efforts on
education and awareness.
Reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Cisco IronPort URL Filters are integrated into the
Cisco IronPort S-Series, a single appliance
solution that addresses all Web security requirements. This
revolutionary system provides a single platform that
addresses both acceptable use and security concerns which,
when combined with comprehensive management and reporting
support, significantly reduces initial and ongoing TCO.
Preserve the End-user Browsing Experience
Powered by Cisco IronPort's next generation AsyncOS™
architecture, Cisco IronPort URL Filters scale to
meet the unique scanning needs of Web traffic — ensuring
that the end-user experience is maintained.
Documentation:
Download the
IronPort URL Filters Data Sheet (PDF).
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