About Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering Solution
URL filtering is a technology that allows you to control
your users’ web access and prevent them from accessing sites known
to host malicious content.
Palo Alto Networks URL filtering solution, Advanced
URL Filtering, is a subscription-based feature that protects against
web-based threats by giving you a way to safely enable web access
while controlling how your users interact with online content. The
Advanced URL Filtering subscription provides all of the functionality
offered by the legacy URL Filtering subscription, while also providing
the added benefit of real-time URL analysis.
Legacy URL Filtering subscription holders are able to continue
using their URL filtering deployment until the end of the license
term.
You can create policy rules to limit access to sites based on
URL categories,
users, and groups. (See
URL Filtering Use
Cases for different ways you can leverage Advanced URL Filtering
to meet your organization’s web security needs.)
With URL Filtering enabled, all web traffic (HTTP and HTTPS)
on any port is:
Compared against the PAN-DB URL database, which contains
millions of websites that have been categorized. You can use these
URL categories in URL Filtering profiles or as match criteria to
enforce Security policy. You can also use URL filtering to enforce
safe search settings for your users and to
prevent
credential theft based on URL category.
Analyzed in real-time using the cloud-based Advanced URL
Filtering detection modules to provide protection against new and
unknown threats that do not currently exist in the URL filtering
database.
Inspected for phishing and malicious JavaScript using
inline machine
learning (ML), a firewall-based analysis solution, which
can block unknown malicious web pages in real-time.
If the network security requirements in your enterprise prohibit
the firewalls from directly accessing the Internet, Palo Alto Networks
provides an offline URL filtering solution with the
PAN-DB
Private Cloud. This allows you to deploy a PAN-DB private
cloud on one or more M-600 appliances that function as PAN-DB servers
within your network.