While Security policy rules enable you to allow or block traffic on your network, Security profiles help you define an allow but scan rule, which scans allowed applications for threats, such as viruses, malware, spyware, and DDOS attacks. When traffic matches the allow rule defined in the Security policy, the Security profile(s) that are attached to the rule are applied for further content inspection rules such as antivirus checks and data filtering.

Security profiles are the only profiles that attach to security policy rules. Profiles and the policies that they attach to must be of the same type.

You can use out of the box default Security profiles to begin protecting your network from threats. See Set Up a Basic Security Policy for information on using the default profiles in your Security policy.