One of the jobs of the GlobalProtect app is to collect information about the host it is running on. The app then submits this host information to the GlobalProtect gateway upon successful connection. The gateway matches this raw host information submitted by the app against any HIP objects and HIP profiles that you have defined. If it finds a match, it generates an entry in the HIP Match log. Additionally, if it finds a HIP profile match in a policy rule, it enforces the corresponding security policy.

HIP checks are performed when the app connects to the gateway and subsequent checks are performed hourly while the GlobalProtect agent is connected. The GlobalProtect agent can request an updated HIP report if the previous HIP check has changed. Only the latest HIP report is retained on the gateway per endpoint.

Using host information profiles for policy enforcement enables granular security that ensures the remote hosts accessing your critical resources are adequately maintained and adhere with your security standards before they are allowed access to your network resources. For example, before allowing access to your most sensitive data systems, you might want to ensure that the hosts accessing the data have encryption enabled on their hard drives. You can enforce this policy by creating a security rule that only allows access to the application if the endpoint system has encryption enabled. In addition, for endpoints that are not in compliance with this rule, you could create a notification message that alerts users as to why they have been denied access and links them to the file share where they can access the installation program for the missing encryption software (of course, to allow the user to access that file share you would have to create a corresponding security rule allowing access to the particular share for hosts with that specific HIP profile match).