Advanced URL Filtering
Configure URL Filtering
Table of Contents
Configure URL Filtering
Follow these steps to configure URL Filtering profiles
and settings that meet your organization’s business and security
needs.
Where can I use
this? | What do I need? |
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Notes:
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After you plan your URL filtering
deployment, you should have a basic understanding of the
types of websites your users are accessing. Use this information
to create a URL Filtering profile that defines how the firewall
handles traffic to specific URL categories. You can also restrict
the sites to which users can submit corporate credentials or enforce strict
safe search. To activate these settings, apply the URL Filtering
profile to Security policy rules that
allow web access.
Configure URL Filtering (Strata Cloud Manager)
Strata Cloud Manager
)If you’re using Panorama to manage
Prisma Access
:Toggle over to the
PAN-OS & Panorama
tab and follow the guidance there.If you’re using
Strata Cloud Manager
, continue here.URL filtering is called
URL Access Management
in Strata Cloud Manager
- Check that yourPrisma Accesssubscription covers Advanced URL Filtering.
- Explore the URL Access Management Dashboard.Go to.ManageConfigurationSecurity ServicesURL Access ManagementMove between theAccess Control,Settings, andBest Practicestabs to explore the available URL filtering features.
- Review and customize General URL Filtering Settings.On the dashboard, go toSettingsto see the default URL Filtering settings that apply across yourPrisma Accessenvironment, including:
- URL Filtering timeout and lookup settings
- URL Filtering overrides for certain admins
- URL Filtering response pages
Automatically append end tokens to URLs in a custom URL category or external dynamic list(PAN-OS 10.1 and earlier)If you add URLs to custom URL categories or external dynamic lists (EDLs) of URL list type and don't append a trailing slash (/), you may block or allow more URLs than intended. For example, enteringexample.cominstead ofexample.com/expands matching URLs to example.com.website.info or example.com.br.Prisma Accesscan automatically append a trailing slash to URLs in custom URL categories or EDLs so that, if you enterexample.com,Prisma Accesstreats it as it would treatexample.com/and only considers that domain and its subdirectories matches. Go toand enable theSettingsGeneral SettingsAppend End Token to Entriesoption.(PAN-OS 10.2 and later)Prisma Accessautomatically adds a trailing slash to domain entries.You can customize these settings for each deployment type (mobile users, remote networks, or service connections). - Create a URL Access Management profile.On the URL Access Management dashboard,Add Profileand continue to specify web access settings:
- Access Controldisplays the URL categories and lists for which you can define web access and usage policy. By default, theSite AccessandUser Credential Submissionpermissions for all categories are set toAllow.
- For each URL category, configureUser Credential Detectionso that users can submit credentials only to sites in specified URL categories.
- EnableSafe Search Enforcementto enforce strict safe search filtering.
- EnableLog Container Page Onlyto log only those URLs that match the content type that is specified.
- EnablingHTTP Header Loggingprovides visibility into the attributes in the HTTP request sent to a server.
- Use theAdvanced URL Inline Categorizationto enable and configure real-time web page analysis and manage URL exceptions.
- Enable local Inline Categorization—Enables real-time analysis of URL traffic using machine learning models, to detect and prevent malicious phishing variants and JavaScript exploits from entering your network.
- Enable cloud Inline Categorization—Enables real-time analysis of URLs by forwarding suspicious web page contents to the cloud for supplemental analysis, using machine learning based detectors that complement the analysis engines used by local inline ML.
- You can define URLExceptionsfor specific web sites to exclude from inline machine learning actions.
Note that:- Best practice checks are built-in to the profile to give you a live evaluation of your configuration.
- After you’ve finished enabling a profile, you can examine profile usage to see if any security policy rules are referencing the profile.
- Apply the URL Access Management profile to a Security policy rule.A URL Access Management profile is only active when it’s included in a profile group that a Security policy rule references.Follow the steps to activate a URL Access Management profile (and any Security profile). Be sure toPush Config
Configure URL Filtering (PAN-OS & Panorama)
PAN-OS
& Panorama
)Follow these steps to configure URL Filtering profiles
and settings that meet your organization’s business and security
needs.
- Create a URL Filtering profile.If you didn’t already, configure a best practice URL Filtering profile to ensure protection against URLs hosting malware or exploitive content.SelectandObjectsSecurity ProfilesURL FilteringAddor modify a URL Filtering profile.
- Define site access for each URL category.SelectCategoriesand set the Site Access for each URL category:
- allowtraffic destined for that URL category; allowed traffic is not logged.
- Selectalertto have visibility into sites that users are accessing. Traffic matching that category is allowed but a URL filtering log is generated to record when a user accesses a site in that category.
- Selectblockto deny access to traffic that matches that category and to enable logging of the blocked traffic.
- Selectcontinueto display a page to users with a warning and require them to clickContinueto proceed to a site in that category.
- To only allow access if users provide a configured password, selectoverride. For more details, see Allow Password Access to Certain Sites.
- Configure the URL Filtering profile to detect corporate credential submissions to websites that are in allowed URL categories.To ensure the best performance and a low false positive rate, the firewall automatically skips checking the credential submissions for any App-ID™ associated with sites that have never been observed hosting malware or phishing content—even if you enable checks in the corresponding category. The list of sites for which the firewall skips credential checking is automatically updated through Applications and Threats content updates.
- SelectUser Credential Detection.
- Select one of the methods to check for corporate credential submissions to web pages from theUser Credential Detectiondrop-down:
- Use IP User Mapping—Checks for valid corporate username submissions and verifies that the username matches the user logged in to the source IP address of the session. The firewall matches the submitted username against its IP address-to-username mapping table. You can use any of the user mapping methods described in Map IP Addresses to Users.
- Use Domain Credential Filter—Checks for valid corporate usernames and password submissions and verifies that the username maps to the IP address of the logged-in user. See Configure Credential Detection with the Windows-based User-ID Agent for instructions on how to set up User-ID to enable this method.
- Use Group Mapping—Checks for valid username submissions based on the user-to-group mapping table populated when you configure the firewall to map users to groups.With group mapping, you can apply credential detection toanypart of the directory or to a specific group, such as groups like IT that have access to your most sensitive applications.
This method is prone to false positives in environments that do not have uniquely structured usernames, so you should only use this method to protect your high-value user accounts. - Set theValid Username Detected Log Severitythat the firewall uses to log detection of corporate credential submissions (default is medium).
- Configure the URL Filtering profile to detect phishing and malicious JavaScript in real-time using local inline categorization.
- Allow or block users from submitting corporate credentials to sites based on URL category to prevent credential phishing.To ensure the best performance and a low false positive rate, the firewall automatically skips checking the credential submissions for any App-ID associated with sites that have never been observed hosting malware or phishing content—even if you enable checks in the corresponding category. The list of sites for which the firewall skips credential checking is automatically updated through Applications and Threats content updates.
- For each URL category to which you allowSite Access, select how you want to treatUser Credential Submissions:
- alert—Allow users to submit credentials to the website but generate a URL filtering alert log each time a user submits credentials to sites in this URL category.
- allow(default)—Allow users to submit credentials to the website.
- block—Displays the anti-phishing block page to block users from submitting credentials to the website.
- continue—Present the anti-phishing continue page, which requires users to clickContinueto access the site.
- Configure the URL Filtering profile to detect corporate credential submissions to websites in allowed URL categories.
- Define URL category exceptions to specify websites that should always be blocked or allowed, regardless of URL category.For example, to reduce URL filtering logs, you may want to add your corporate websites to the allow list so that no logs are generated for those sites or, if there is a website that is being overly used and is not work-related, you can add that site to the block list.The policy actions configured for custom URL categories have priority enforcement over matching URLs in external dynamic lists.Traffic to websites in the block list is always blocked regardless of the action for the associated category and traffic to URLs in the allow list is always allowed.For more information on the proper format and wildcard usage, review the URL Category Exception Guidelines.
- Enable Safe Search Enforcement.
- Log only the page a user visits for URL filtering events.
- SelectURL Filtering Settingsand enableLog container page only(default) so that the firewall logs only the main page that matches the category, not subsequent pages or categories that load within the container page.
- To enable logging for all pages and categories, disable theLog container page onlyoption.
- Enable HTTP Header Logging for one or more of the supported HTTP header fields.SelectURL Filtering Settingsand select one or more of the following fields to log:
- User-Agent
- Referer
- X-Forwarded-For
- Save the URL Filtering profile.ClickOK.
- Apply the URL Filtering profile to Security policy rules that allow traffic from clients in the trust zone to the Internet.Make sure theSource Zonein the Security policy rules to which you add URL Filtering profiles is set to a protected internal network.
- Select. Then, select a Security policy rule to modify.PoliciesSecurity
- On theActionstab, edit the Profile Setting.
- ForProfile Type, selectProfiles. A list of profiles appears.
- ForURL Filteringprofile, select the profile you just created.
- ClickOKto save your changes.
- Committhe configuration.
- (Best Practice) EnableHold client request for category lookupto block client requests while the firewall performs URL category lookups.
- Select.DeviceSetupContent-ID
- SelectHold client request for category lookup.
- Commityour changes.
- Set the amount of time, in seconds, before a URL category lookup times out.
- Select.DeviceSetupContent-IDgear icon
- Enter a number forCategory lookup timeout (sec).
- ClickOK.
- Commityour changes.