Web Content Filters Test
You can control web content by blocking access to web pages containing specific words or patterns. This helps to prevent access to pages with questionable material. You can also add words, phrases, patterns, wild cards and Perl regular expressions to match content on web pages. You can add multiple web content filter lists and then select the best web content filter list for each web filter profile.
Enabling web content filtering involves three separate parts of the FortiGate configuration.
- The security policy allows certain network traffic based on the sender, receiver, interface, traffic type, and time of day.
- The web filter profile specifies what sort of web filtering is applied.
- The web content filter list contains blocked and exempt patterns.
The web content filter feature scans the content of every web page that is accepted by a security policy. The system administrator can specify banned words and phrases and attach a numerical value, or score, to the importance of those words and phrases. When the web content filter scan detects banned content, it adds the scores of banned words and phrases in the page. If the sum is higher than a threshold set in the web filter profile, the FortiGate unit blocks the page.
By closely monitoring the target environment guarded by the FortiGate firewall, administrators can actually figure out the health of the web content filter of the firewall. The number of HTTP/HTTPS requests examined, allowed and blocked helps administrators figure out the efficiency of the web content filter. The higher the ratio of the HTTP requests blocked indicates that the firewall is put to the maximum use in the target environment by the administrators to prevent malicious attacks, unwanted browsing under check and maintain optimal utilization of the resources in the target environment.
Target of the test : A FortiGate Firewall
Agent deploying the test : An external agent
Outputs of the test : One set of results for the target firewall being monitored
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
|
Test Period |
How often should the test be executed. |
|
Host |
The IP address of the host for which this test is to be configured. |
|
Port |
Refers to the port at which the specified host listens to. |
|
SNMPPort |
The port at which the monitored target exposes its SNMP MIB; The default value is 161. |
|
SNMPVersion |
By default, the eG agent supports SNMP version 1. Accordingly, the default selection in the SNMPversion list is v1. However, if a different SNMP framework is in use in your environment, say SNMP v2 or v3, then select the corresponding option from this list. |
|
SNMPCommunity |
The SNMP community name that the test uses to communicate with the firewall. This parameter is specific to SNMP v1 and v2 only. Therefore, if the SNMPVersion chosen is v3, then this parameter will not appear. |
|
UserName |
This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. SNMP version 3 (SNMPv3) is an extensible SNMP Framework which supplements the SNMPv2 Framework, by additionally supporting message security, access control, and remote SNMP configuration capabilities. To extract performance statistics from the MIB using the highly secure SNMP v3 protocol, the eG agent has to be configured with the required access privileges – in other words, the eG agent should connect to the MIB using the credentials of a user with access permissions to be MIB. Therefore, specify the name of such a user against this parameter. |
|
Context |
This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. An SNMP context is a collection of management information accessible by an SNMP entity. An item of management information may exist in more than one context and an SNMP entity potentially has access to many contexts. A context is identified by the SNMPEngineID value of the entity hosting the management information (also called a contextEngineID) and a context name that identifies the specific context (also called a contextName). If the Username provided is associated with a context name, then the eG agent will be able to poll the MIB and collect metrics only if it is configured with the context name as well. In such cases therefore, specify the context name of the Username in the Context text box. By default, this parameter is set to none. |
|
AuthPass |
Specify the password that corresponds to the above-mentioned Username. This parameter once again appears only if the SNMPversion selected is v3. |
|
Confirm Password |
Confirm the AuthPass by retyping it here. |
|
AuthType |
This parameter too appears only if v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. From the AuthType list box, choose the authentication algorithm using which SNMP v3 converts the specified username and password into a 32-bit format to ensure security of SNMP transactions. You can choose between the following options:
|
|
EncryptFlag |
This flag appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. By default, the eG agent does not encrypt SNMP requests. Accordingly, the this flag is set to No by default. To ensure that SNMP requests sent by the eG agent are encrypted, select the Yes option. |
|
EncryptType |
If the EncryptFlag is set to Yes, then you will have to mention the encryption type by selecting an option from the EncryptType list. SNMP v3 supports the following encryption types:
|
|
EncryptPassword |
Specify the encryption password here. |
|
Confirm Password |
Confirm the encryption password by retyping it here. |
|
Timeout |
Specify the duration (in seconds) within which the SNMP query executed by this test should time out in this text box. The default is 10 seconds. |
|
Data Over TCP |
By default, in an IT environment, all data transmission occurs over UDP. Some environments however, may be specifically configured to offload a fraction of the data traffic – for instance, certain types of data traffic or traffic pertaining to specific components – to other protocols like TCP, so as to prevent UDP overloads. In such environments, you can instruct the eG agent to conduct the SNMP data traffic related to the monitored target over TCP (and not UDP). For this, set this flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No. |
|
EngineID |
This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. Sometimes, the test may not report metrics when AES192 or AES256 is chosen as the Encryption type. To ensure that the test report metrics consistently, administrators need to set this flag to Yes. By default, this parameter is set to No. |
| Measurement | Description | Measurement Unit | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|---|
|
HTTP requests examined |
Indicates the number of HTTP requests that were examined by the web content filter of the firewall. |
Number |
|
|
HTTPS requests examined |
Indicates the number of SSL enabled HTTPS request that were examined by the web content filter of the firewall. |
Number |
|
|
HTTP requests allowed |
Indicates the number of HTTP requests that were allowed by the web content filter of the firewall. |
Number |
|
|
HTTPS requests allowed |
Indicates the number of SSL enabled HTTP requests that were allowed by the web content filter of the firewall. |
Number |
|
|
HTTP requests blocked |
Indicates the number of HTTP requests that were blocked by the web content filter of the firewall. |
Number |
|
|
HTTPS requests blocked |
Indicates the number of SSL enabled HTTP requests that were blocked by the web content filter of the firewall. |
Number |
|
|
HTTP requests blocked ratio |
Indicates the ratio of HTTP requests that were blocked to the HTTP requests that were examined, in percentage. |
Percentage |
This measure is obtained using the formulae: (HTTP requests blocked/HTTP requests examined)*100 |
|
HTTPS requests blocked ratio |
Indicates the ratio of SSL enabled HTTP requests that were blocked to the SSL enabled HTTP requests that were examined, in percentage. |
Percentage |
This measure is obtained using the formulae: (HTTPS requests blocked/HTTPS requests examined)*100 |
