Get Started with Advanced URL Filtering (Strata Cloud Manager)

1. Use Test A Site to check how PAN-DB categorizes a specific website.

   You can also use the platform to request a categorization change for any website that you believe has been incorrectly categorized.
2. Create a passive URL Access Management profile that alerts on all categories.

   The firewall generates a URL filtering log entry for websites in URL categories with an action other than allow.

   1. Select ConfigurationNGFW and Prisma AccessSecurity ServicesURL Access Management.
   2. Under URL Access Management Profiles, select the checkbox next to the best-practices profile and then Clone the profile.

      The cloned profile appears under the profiles with the name best-practices-1.
   3. Select the best-practices-1 profile and rename it. For example, rename it to url-monitoring.
3. Alert on all categories except malware, command-and-control, and phishing, which should remain blocked.

   1. Under Access Control, select all categories, then exclude malware, command-and-control, and phishing.
   2. With the categories still highlighted, click Set Access and choose Alert.
   3. Block access to malware, command-and-control, and phishing other known dangerous URL categories:

      • phishing
      • dynamic-dns
      • unknown
      • extremism
      • copyright-infringement
      • proxy-avoidance-and-anonymizers
      • newly-registered-domain
      • grayware
      • parked
   4. Save the profile.
4. Apply the URL Access Management profile to Security policy rules that allow traffic from clients in the trust zone to the internet.

   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).

   Make sure the Source Zone in the Security policy rules you apply to URL Access Management profiles to is set to a protected internal network.
5. Push Config to commit the configuration.
6. Check the URL logs to see which website categories your users are accessing. Blocked websites are also logged.

   For information on viewing the logs and generating reports, see Monitoring Web Activity.

   Select Log Viewer and then the URL log type from the drop down. URL Filtering reports provide a view of web activity in a 24-hour period.
7. Next Steps:

   • For everything that you don't allow or block, use risk categories to write policy rules based on website safety. PAN-DB categorizes every URL with a risk-level (high, medium, and low). While high and medium-risk sites are not confirmed malicious, they are closely associated with malicious sites. For example, they might be on the same domain as malicious sites or maybe they hosted malicious content until only very recently.
     You can take precautionary measures to limit your users’ interaction high-risk sites especially, as there might be some cases where you want to give your users access to sites that might also present safety concerns (for example, you might want to allow your developers to use developer blogs for research, yet blogs are a category known to commonly host malware).
   • Pair URL filtering with User-ID to control web access based on organization or department and to block corporate credential submissions to unsanctioned sites:
     • URL filtering prevents credential theft by detecting corporate credential submissions to sites based on the site category. Block users from submitting credentials to malicious and untrusted sites, warn users against entering corporate credentials on unknown sites or reusing corporate credentials on non-corporate sites, and explicitly allow users to submit credentials to corporate sites.
     • Add or update a Security policy rule with the passive URL Access Management profile so that it applies to a department user group, for example, Marketing or Engineering. Monitor the department activity, and get feedback from department members to understand the web resources that are essential to the work they do.
   • Consider all the ways of leveraging URL filtering to reduce your attack surface. For example, a school may use URL filtering to enforce strict safe search for students. Or, if you have a security operations center, you might give only threat analysts password access to compromised or dangerous sites for research.
   • Follow URL filtering best practices.