About Access Warning Mode

URL Filtering in IWSVA is a feature to filter Internet access that is based on the categories of URLs, such as “Adult”, “Gambling,” and “Financial Services.” When a user requests a URL, IWSVA first looks up the category for that URL and then allows or denies access to the URL based on the policies administrator has set up.

For a specific URL category, there are six actions in IWSVA: “allow” to permit the access; “block” to stop the access; "block with override" to enter password to override the blocking, “monitor” to allow the access but log the action silently; "time limit" to set a time quota for selected URL categories, and "warn" alerts the user that there is a problem with the URL they are accessing.  Warning mode might be used instead of block or monitor because:

• For block mode, users may complain that blocking activity have affected their productivity as some sites that are blocked are false positives.

• For monitor mode, users even don’t know they have violated company policy.

URL Filtering's URL Access Warning Mode allows administrators to set  a "warning mode" action for selected URL categories. When users attempt to access URLs in the selected category, a warning page displays, informing users that the URL violates company’s policy. Users can select from two options:

• Go back to the previous page

• Continue to the URL (not recommended)

The second option allows users to go to blocked content after they have acknowledged a corporate warning. This type of URL Warning is used for two purposes:

• To gradually reduce the amount of unwanted URL activity by letting the user know that they are being monitored and their activity is recorded.

• To eliminate the need for manual fixes of false positives.

Each policy offers the option of setting the URL Filtering Warning Mode to a specific URL category. This mode works for pre-defined categories or the custom categories created by the administrator. It also allows the use of the exception list, like the other action modes.

Warning mode offers administrators the ability to customize the end-user notification as well as configure the Time to Live (TTL) features that specifies the interval at which the notification repeats.

Administrators can also query the URL filtering warning mode log and query or generate reports about warning mode.

• Logs reveal both the warn notifications issues and the warn-and-continue actions.

• Reports detail, by user or by category, how often the warning message was delivered and how often there was a "warn and continue" action.

See also:

• URL Access Warning TTL

• URL Filtering Policies: Rules