Manage the Intelligent Proxy

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Support for the intelligent proxy is deprecated and only available for legacy deployments of the MSP console. The intelligent proxy is not available for new deployments of the MSP console.

Umbrella's intelligent proxy allows for URL-based malware filtering of domains with legitimate content where some pages may contain malicious files. With the MSP console, the steps to enable or disable it are the same as for any other Centralized Setting. Once configured, it is automatically shared with all existing Umbrella policies for the customer of the Centralized Setting. This intelligent proxy setting is also available in each customers Umbrella policy wizard.

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Wait, what's a proxy?

A proxy is just a step between your computer or mobile device and the internet. It intercepts requests to content on the internet, inspects it and if it doesn't find a problem, allows access. On the other hand, if there's a security threat posed by the content the computer was trying to access, it's blocked by the proxy. This quickly and easily protects you without the threat ever coming near enough to do harm.

Best Practices

There's no additional software (or hardware) required to use it, and no additional cost besides your license. The intelligent proxy is just another security setting. However, we do highly recommend also selecting the SSL Decryption option to broaden the scope of your protection. You will need to import the Cisco certificate to make the decryption possible. As with any change we recommend making this change on a small subset of your user base first to ensure full compatibility; you may find you need to expand your allow list.

SSL Decryption Requirements and Implementation

Although only SSL sites on our greylist will be proxied, it's required that the root certificate be installed on the computers that are using SSL decryption for the intelligent proxy in their policy. Sites on our 'grey' list can include popular sites, such as file sharing services, that can potentially host malware on certain specific URLs while the vast majority of the rest of the site is perfectly harmless, so your users will go to some proxied sites even if they're acting in good faith.

Without the root certificate, when your users go to that service, they will receive errors in the browser and the site will not be accessible. The browser, correctly, will believe the traffic is being intercepted (and proxied!) by a 'man in the middle', which is our service in this case. The traffic won't be decrypted and inspected; instead, the entire website won't be available.

With the root certificate installed, errors won't occur and the site will be accessible when it's been proxied and allowed. For information on installing the root certificate on multiple browsers and platforms, see Import the Cisco Certificate.

Create and Apply Policies < Enable Umbrella's Intelligent Proxy > What is the Intelligent Proxy?