Use Application Objects in Policy

• Create an Application Group
  An application group is an object that contains applications that you want to treat similarly in policy. Application groups are useful for enabling access to applications that you explicitly sanction for use within your organization. Grouping sanctioned applications simplifies administration of your rulebases. Instead of having to update individual policy rules when there is a change in the applications you support, you can update only the affected application groups.
  When deciding how to group applications, consider how you plan to enforce access to your sanctioned applications and create an application group that aligns with each of your policy goals. For example, you might have some applications that you will only allow your IT administrators to access, and other applications that you want to make available for any known user in your organization. In this case, you would create separate application groups for each of these policy goals. Although you generally want to enable access to applications on the default port only, you may want to group applications that are an exception to this and enforce access to those applications in a separate rule.
  1. Select ObjectsApplication Groups.
  2. Add a group and give it a descriptive Name.
  3. (Optional) Select Shared to create the object in a shared location for access as a shared object in Panorama or for use across all virtual systems in a multiple virtual system firewall.
  4. Add the applications you want in the group and then click OK.

  5. Commit the configuration.
• Create an Application Filter
  An application filter is an object that dynamically groups applications based on application attributes that you define, including category, subcategory, technology, risk factor, and characteristic. This is useful when you want to safely enable access to applications that you do not explicitly sanction, but that you want users to be able to access. For example, you may want to enable employees to choose their own office programs (such as Evernote, Google Docs, or Microsoft Office 365) for business use. To safely enable these types of applications, you could create an application filter that matches on the Category business-systems and the Subcategory office-programs. As new applications office programs emerge and new App-IDs get created, these new applications will automatically match the filter you defined; you will not have to make any additional changes to your policy rulebase to safely enable any application that matches the attributes you defined for the filter.
  1. Select ObjectsApplication Filters.
  2. Add a filter and give it a descriptive Name.
  3. (Optional) Select Shared to create the object in a shared location for access as a shared object in Panorama or for use across all virtual systems in a multiple virtual system firewall.
  4. Define the filter by selecting attribute values from the Category, Subcategory, Technology, Risk, Characteristic, and Tags sections. (Tags can streamline Security policy rule creation and maintenance). As you select values, notice that the list of matching applications at the bottom of the dialog narrows. When you have adjusted the filter attributes to match the types of applications you want to safely enable, click OK.

  5. Commit the configuration.
• Create a Custom Application
• Resolve Application Dependencies