Web filtering profiles

Web filtering profiles specify how to filter websites by category and site list. You can reuse them in any of your Endpoint or Server Web Control policies.

You can create up to 20 web profiles per Sophos Central account.

Requirements

You must have an admin role that includes Manage web profiles to create, edit, or delete web profiles.

To check what your role includes, see View a role's details.

Create a profile

To create a profile, do as follows:

1. Click the Global Settings icon .

2. Go to Protection & Remediation > Web Settings, and click Web Filtering Profiles.

   The Web Filtering Profiles page opens. You can add and manage your profiles here.

3. On the Web Filtering Profiles tab, click Add profile.

   

4. In the Add web filtering profile slide-out that appears, do as follows:

   1. Enter a Name and Description for the profile.
   2. In the Settings section, configure the profile. See Configure the profile.

   

Configure the profile

Configure your profile to filter websites by category or by site lists.

You can turn on both Filter by category and Filter by site lists in the same profile.

Filter by category

If you want to know the category that we put a website in, click Site category lookup and use SophosLabs Intelix to find out.

To filter websites by categories, do as follows:

1. Turn on Filter by category.

2. Select one of the settings below to control the sites that users are allowed to visit. You can click View Details to see the website categories that are controlled and the action taken.

   • Keep it clean: Prevents users from accessing adult and other potentially inappropriate websites.
   • Gentle guidance: Blocks inappropriate browsing and warns users before visiting website categories that may impact their productivity.
   • Conserve bandwidth: Blocks inappropriate browsing and warns users before visiting productivity-impacting websites. Blocks site categories likely to consume high bandwidth.
   • Business only: Only allows site categories that are generally business-related.

   • Let me specify: Allows you to configure individual site categories. For each group of categories, you can choose to Block, Warn, Allow, or Let me specify.

     Selecting Let me specify allows you to configure individual categories within these groups.

Filter by site lists

Site lists are custom lists of individual websites that you want to filter. They take priority over filtering by category or file type.

Add a site list to your profile so that it can filter the sites in the list. If you haven't created any site lists yet, see Create site lists.

1. Turn on Filter by site lists.
2. In Select a site list, select the list you want to use.

3. Click Add.

   The site is added to the table of site lists.

4. Specify the action to take on the websites in the list. Click Allow, Warn, or Block next to the site list name.

   

To change the site lists used by the profile at any time, edit the profile.

Edit a profile

To edit a profile, do as follows:

1. Click the Global Settings icon .

2. Go to Protection & Remediation > Web Settings, and click Web Filtering Profiles.

   The Web Filtering Profiles page opens.

3. In the table of profiles, click the profile you want to edit.

4. In the Edit web filtering profile dialog, edit the settings.

Create site lists

To create or edit a site list, do as follows:

1. Click the Global Settings icon .

2. Go to Protection & Remediation > Web Settings, and click Web Filtering Profiles.

   The Web Filtering Profiles page opens.

3. Select the Site lists tab.

4. Click Add site list.

5. In the Add site list dialog, do as follows:

   1. Enter a Name and Description for the list.
   2. In Add sites, add domains, URLs, IP addresses, or CIDR ranges. Press Enter or Tab after each item, even when adding a single item.

   You can add up to 750 sites to each site list.

   

6. Click Save.

The site list is added to the table of site lists.

Add a site list to a profile

1. Click the Global Settings icon .
2. Go to Protection & Remediation > Web Settings, and click Web Filtering Profiles.
3. On the Web filtering profiles tab, click the profile you want to add the site list to.
4. In the Edit web filtering profile page, go to Filter by site lists.
5. Click Select a site list and select the site list you want to add.

6. Click Add.

   The site list shows in the table.

7. In the Access column, select the action to take on the sites in the list: Allow, Warn, or Block.

8. Click Save.

You can add up to 20 site lists to each profile.

The higher a list is in the table, the higher its priority. You can drag and drop lists to reorder them.