Web Filtering Overview

Web filtering lets you manage Internet usage by preventing access to inappropriate Web content. There are three types of Web filtering solutions:

• Integrated Web filtering—The integrated Web filtering solution intercepts every HTTP request in a TCP connection. In this case, the decision making is done on the device after it identifies the category for a URL either from user-defined categories or from a category server (SurfControl Content Portal Authority provided by Websense).

  Note: The integrated Web filtering feature is a separately licensed subscription service. When the license key for Web filtering has expired, no URLs are sent to the category server for checking, only local user-defined categories are checked.

• Redirect Web filtering—The redirect Web filtering solution intercepts HTTP requests and sends them to an external URL filtering server, provided by Websense, to determine whether to block the requests.

  Note: Redirect Web filtering does not require a license.

• Local Web filtering—The local Web filtering solution intercepts every HTTP request in a TCP connection. In this case, the decision making is done on the device after it looks up a URL to determine if it is in the whitelist or blacklist based on its user-defined category.

  Note: Local Web filtering does not require a license or a remote category server.

You can bind either Web filtering profiles or antivirus profiles, or both, to a firewall policy. When both are bound to a firewall policy, Web filtering is applied first, then antivirus is applied. If a URL is blocked by Web filtering, the TCP connection is closed and no antivirus scanning is necessary. If a URL is permitted, the content of the transaction is then passed to the antivirus scanning process.

Related Topics

Junos OS Feature Support Reference for SRX Series and J Series Devices