Cisco Cisco Web Security Appliance S160 User Guide

You can configure URL filtering for user defined Decryption Policy groups and the global Decryption 
Policy group.

Choose Web Security Manager > Decryption Policies.

Click the link in the policies table under the URL Categories column for the policy group you want to 
edit.

(Optional) In the Custom URL Category Filtering section, you can add custom URL categories on which 
to take action in this policy:

Click Select Custom Categories.

Choose which custom URL categories to include in this policy and click Apply.

Choose which custom URL categories the URL filtering engine should compare the client request 
against. The URL filtering engine compares client requests against included custom URL 
categories, and ignores excluded custom URL categories. The URL filtering engine compares the 
URL in a client request to included custom URL categories before predefined URL categories. 

The custom URL categories included in the policy appear in the Custom URL Category Filtering 
section.

Choose an action for each custom and predefined URL category. 

Use Global 
Setting

Uses the action for this category in the global Decryption Policy group. This is the 
default action for user defined policy groups.

Applies to user defined policy groups only.

When a custom URL category is excluded in the global Decryption Policy, then the 
default action for included custom URL categories in user defined Decryption 
Policies is Monitor instead of Use Global Settings. You cannot choose Use Global 
Settings when a custom URL category is excluded in the global Decryption Policy. 

Pass Through

Passes through the connection between the client and the server without inspecting 
the traffic content. 

Monitor

The Web Proxy neither allows nor blocks the request. Instead, it continues to 
evaluate the client request against other policy group control settings, such as web 
reputation filtering.

Decrypt

Allows the connection, but inspects the traffic content. The appliance decrypts the 
traffic and applies Access Policies to the decrypted traffic as if it were a plain text 
HTTP connection. By decrypting the connection and applying Access Policies, you 
can scan the traffic for malware. 

Drop

Drops the connection and does not pass the connection request to the server. The 
appliance does not notify the user that it dropped the connection.