Applications Overview
Table of Contents
Applications Overview
The Applications page lists various attributes of each
application definition, such as the application’s relative security
risk (1 to 5). The risk value is based on criteria such as whether
the application can share files, is prone to misuse, or tries to
evade firewalls. Higher values indicate higher risk.
The top application browser area of the page lists the attributes
that you can use to filter the display as follows. The number to
the left of each entry represents the total number of applications
with that attribute.
Weekly content releases periodically include new decoders
and contexts for which you can develop signatures.
The following table describes application details—custom applications
and Palo Alto® Networks applications might display some or all of
these fields.
Application Details | Description |
|---|---|
Name | Name of the application. |
Description | Description of the application (up to 255
characters). |
Additional Information | Links to web sources (Wikipedia, Google,
and Yahoo!) that contain additional information about the application. |
Standard Ports | Ports that the application uses to communicate
with the network. |
Depends on | List of other applications that are required
for this application to run. When creating a policy rule to allow
the selected application, you must also be sure that you are allowing any
other applications that the application depends on. |
Implicitly Uses | Other applications that the selected application
depends on but that you do not need to add to your Security policy
rules to allow the selected application because those applications
are supported implicitly. |
Previously Identified As | For a new App-ID™, or App-IDs that are changed,
this indicates what the application was previously identified as.
This helps you assess whether policy changes are required based
on changes in the application. If an App-ID is disabled, sessions associated
with that application will match policy as the previously identified
as application. Similarly, disabled App-IDs will appear in logs
as the application they were previous identified as. |
Deny Action | App-IDs are developed with a default deny
action that dictates how the firewall responds when the application
is included in a Security policy rule with a deny action. The default deny
action can specify either a silent drop or a TCP reset. You can
override this default action in Security policy. |
Characteristics | |
Evasive | Uses a port or protocol for something other
than its originally intended purpose with the hope that it will
traverse a firewall. |
Excessive Bandwidth | Consumes at least 1 Mbps on a regular basis
through normal use. |
Prone to Misuse | Often used for nefarious purposes or is
easily set up to expose more than the user intended. |
SaaS | On the firewall, Software as a Service (SaaS)
is characterized as a service where the software and infrastructure are
owned and managed by the application service provider but where
you retain full control of the data, including who can create, access,
share, and transfer the data. Keep in mind that in the context
of how an application is characterized, SaaS applications differ
from web services. Web services are hosted applications where either
the user doesn’t own the data (for example, Pandora) or where the
service is primarily comprised of sharing data fed by many subscribers
for social purposes (for example, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook). |
Capable of File Transfer | Has the capability to transfer a file from
one system to another over a network. |
Tunnels Other Applications | Is able to transport other applications
inside its protocol. |
Used by Malware | Malware has been known to use the application
for propagation, attack, or data theft, or is distributed with malware. |
Has Known Vulnerabilities | Has publicly reported vulnerabilities. |
Pervasive | Likely has more than 1,000,000 users. |
Continue Scanning for Other Applications | Instructs the firewall to continue to try
and match against other application signatures. If you do not select
this option, the firewall stops looking for additional application
matches after the first matching signature.
If you configure a Vulnerability Protection
profile on the Security policy rule that allows the traffic, the
firewall continues scanning for other applications regardless of
whether you enable or disable this option. |
SaaS Characteristics | |
Data Breaches | Applications that may have released secure
information to an untrusted source within the past three years. |
Poor Terms of Service | Applications with unfavorable terms of service
that can compromise enterprise data. |
No Certifications | Applications lacking current compliance
to industry programs or certifications such as SOC1, SOC2, SSAE16,
PCI, HIPAA, FINRAA, or FEDRAMP. |
Poor Financial Viability | Applications with the potential to be out
of business within the next 18 to 24 months. |
No IP Restrictions | Applications without IP-based restrictions
for user access. |
Classification | |
Category | The application category will be one of
the following:
|
Subcategory | The subcategory in which the application
is classified. Different categories have different subcategories
associated with them. For example, subcategories in the collaboration
category include email, file-sharing, instant-messaging, Internet-conferencing,
social-business, social-networking, voip-video, and web-posting.
Whereas, subcategories in the business-systems category include
auth-service, database, erp-crm, general-business, management, office-programs, software-update,
and storage-backup. |
Technology | The application technology will be one of
the following:
|
Risk | Assigned risk of the application. To
customize this setting, click the Customize link,
enter a value (1-5), and click OK. |
Tags | Tags assigned to an application. Edit
Tags to add or remove tags for an application. |
Options | |
Session Timeout | Period of time, in seconds, required for
the application to time out due to inactivity (range is 1-604800
seconds). This timeout is for protocols other than TCP or UDP. For
TCP and UDP, refer to the next rows in this table. To customize
this setting, click the Customize link, enter
a value, and click OK. |
TCP Timeout (seconds) | Timeout, in seconds, for terminating a TCP
application flow (range is 1-604800). To customize this setting,
click the Customize link, enter a value,
and click OK. A value of 0 indicates
that the global session timer will be used, which is 3600 seconds
for TCP. |
UDP Timeout (seconds): | Timeout, in seconds, for terminating a UDP
application flow (range is 1-604800 seconds). To customize
this setting, click the Customize link, enter
a value, and click OK. |
TCP Half Closed (seconds) | Maximum length of time, in seconds, that
a session remains in the session table between receiving the first
FIN packet and receiving the second FIN packet or RST packet. If
the timer expires, the session is closed (range is 1-604800). Default:
If this timer is not configured at the application level, the global
setting is used. If this value is configured at the application
level, it overrides the global TCP Half Closed setting. |
TCP Time Wait (seconds) | Maximum length of time, in seconds, that
a session remains in the session table after receiving the second
FIN packet or a RST packet. If the timer expires, the session is
closed (range is 1-600). Default: If this timer is not configured
at the application level, the global setting is used. If this
value is configured at the application level, it overrides the global TCP
Time Wait setting. |
App-ID Enabled | Indicates whether the App-ID is enabled
or disabled. If an App-ID is disabled, traffic for that application
will be treated as the Previously Identified As App-ID
in both Security policy and in logs. For applications added after content
release version 490, you have the ability to disable them while
you review the policy impact of the new app. After reviewing policy,
you may choose to enable the App-ID. You
also have the ability to disable an application
that you have previously enabled. On a multi-vsys firewall, you
can disable App-IDs separately in each virtual system. |
When the firewall is not able to identify an application using
the App-ID, the traffic is classified as unknown: unknown-tcp or
unknown-udp. This behavior applies to all unknown applications except
those that fully emulate HTTP. For more information, refer to Monitor > Botnet.
You can create new definitions for unknown applications and then
define security policies for the new application definitions. In
addition, applications that require the same security settings can
be combined into application groups to simplify the creation of
security policies.