Add a Policy

Through policies, you set the rules as to how Umbrella protects and manages your systems—your identities. Add a policy to Umbrella to provide DNS-layer visibility and enforcement with the ability to proxy risky domains selectively.

Table of Contents

• Step 1: Add a Policy
• Step 2: Select Identities
• Step 3: Determine What You Want This Policy to Do
• Step 4: Setting your Security and Content Details
  • Step 4a: Configure Security Settings
  • Step 4b: Configure Content Category Settings
  • Step 4c: Configure Application Settings
  • Step 4d: Configure Destination Lists
  • Step 4e: Configure Block Pages
• Step 5: Set Policy Details

Note: Not all features of the policy wizard explained here are available to all Umbrella packages. To determine your current package, navigate to Admin > Licensing. For more information, see Determine Your Current Package. See also, Cisco Umbrella for Government Packages.

Prerequisites

• Identities are added and configured. See Manage Identities.
• Full admin access to the Umbrella dashboard. See Manage User Roles.

Procedure

Step 1: Add a Policy

1. Navigate to Policies > Management > All Policies and click Add.
   When the All Policies page opens for the first time, it only lists the Default policy. You can add a new policy or edit the Default policy. If you edit the Default policy, the Summary page opens, from which you can edit the Policy.
   Note: The Default policy applies to all identities. You cannot remove identities from the Default policy.

Step 2: Select Identities

1. Select the identities you wish to apply this policy to and click Next.
   This can be any combination of identities available to you. Identity categories, such as AD Computers or Roaming Computers, can be clicked through to choose identities more selectively.

If you have created tags, you can also select these. While listed under identities, a tag is not an identity, but rather a grouping of roaming computer identities. For more information about tags, see Best Practices for Policy Creation.

Step 3. Determine What You Want This Policy To Do

1. Select the policy components you'd like to enable.
   Selecting an option here makes that component available for configuration in the Policy wizard's later steps. However, selecting an option here does not necessarily activate that feature as some features require additional configuration.

Listed options correspond to policy features:

• Enforce Security at the DNS Layer—These are settings related directly to the blocking of domains based on whether they are malicious and provides a base level of security protection. Recommended.
• Limit Content Access—These settings filter types of content. Recommended.
• Control Applications—These settings block access to applications. Recommended.
• Apply Destination Lists—If you have particular domains you'd like to allow or block, add them to a destination list. There are two by default, block or allow, and you can create more to organize groups of domains. The two defaults are the Global lists, meaning they apply to any policy.
  Note: A Global Destination List, whether Block or Allow, applies to all policies and all identities. It is 'global' across all your organization's configurations. To define a specific list, create a new list and add domains only to that list, then apply that list to individual sets of identities.

Advanced Settings

2. Expand Advanced Settings to configure SafeSearch, Allow-Only mode, and logging.

• Enforce SafeSearch—A feature of the major search engines that restricts and filters explicit images and results. Umbrella provides you with the ability to enforce traffic to Google, YouTube, and Bing. For more information, see Enable SafeSearch.
• Allow-Only mode—Select in cases where you wish to allow access to a small subset of domains and block all other domains. Because the result of enabling this feature is to effectively block access to the internet except for that part you've defined as "allowable", we recommend caution if you are enabling this feature.
  Note: This mode only applies to DNS requests, and not HTTP/HTTPS requests.

Logging settings are:

• Log All Requests—For full logging, whether for content, security or otherwise
• Log Only Security Events—For security logging only, which gives your users more privacy—a good setting for people with the roaming client installed on personal devices
• Don't Log Any Requests—Disables all logging. If you select this option, most reporting for identities with this policy will not be helpful as nothing is logged to report on.

For more information about managing your logs, see Manage Your Logs.

3. Click Next.
   When you click Next you'll see a progress meter with the number of steps remaining until you've fully configured the policy. Available steps correspond to your policy component selections.

Step 4. Setting Your Security and Content Details

Step 4a. Configure Security Settings

These settings determine which categories of security threat Umbrella blocks. For more information about security category, see Manage Security Settings.

When you first access Security Settings, default settings are applied. The blue shield icon indicates a selected and enabled security category. You can leave this setting as is, select a different setting or edit settings and create a new one if needed.

1. To edit settings, click Edit, select or clear security categories, and then click Save.

As an alternative to clicking Edit, you can select preconfigured groupings of security settings or create a new setting that you can reuse.

1. From the Security Settings drop-down list, choose a security setting or click Add New Setting.
   If you choose Add New Setting, a window appears allowing you to add a new setting.

2. Give your new setting a meaningful name, select how it is created and then click Create.
3. If you select Create from Scratch, select security settings and click Save.
   Your security setting is added to the drop-down list.

Step 4b. Configure Content Category Settings

Content categories organize destinations—in this case, websites—into categories based on the type of information served by the website; for example, gambling, social networking, or alcohol. Select content categories to block identity access to destinations that serve up content of that type. When an identity attempts to access a destination that is blocked because of a DNS content setting, an Umbrella block page appears. For a list of all categories and a definition for each, see Content Category Definition.

1. Select a preset categorization level:

• High—Blocks adult-related status, illegal activity, social networking, video sharing sites, and general time-wasters. Note that not all content categories are listed under High. There is a sub-listing of content categories that are only available to Custom.
• Moderate—Blocks all adult-related web sites and illegal activity.
• Low—Blocks pornography and anonymous web surfing.
• Custom—For the creation of a custom grouping. Lists all content categories.

The High, Moderate, and Low levels propagate upward. Low categories are included with Moderate and both Moderate and Low category presets are included in High. Custom includes all categories included with the High setting.

2. If you choose Custom, select Categories.
   Optionally, from the Custom Setting drop-down list, choose Create New Setting.
3. Click Next.

As with security settings, you can add a new content setting and modify an existing one directly from within the wizard.

Step 4c. Configure Application Settings

Select applications to block access to them when they represent an unacceptable risk or when their functionality is inappropriate.

1. Select application categories to be blocked or expand a category to choose individual applications.
2. Click Next.

3. Click Proceed to confirm your Application selections.

Step 4d. Configure Destination Lists

Destination lists allow for the customization of filtering by creating a list of domains that are explicitly blocked or allowed.

Creating a destination list is simple: first, pick the type of list you want, then add the domains you would like to have allowed or blocked and give the list a name.

For more information, see Working with Destination Lists.

Note: Destination lists are not saved until you click Save, although it appears in the list view after entering it.

Step 4e. Configure Block Pages

Block Page Settings let you configure a block page that appears when a request is made to access a blocked page. You can customize the block page's appearance and redirect to a custom domain.

• Block Page Settings—This setting let you customize the block page appearance, redirect to a custom domain, and more.

If you'd like to know more about a block or have us review it in more detail, open a case by emailing [email protected] with information about the domain and our support and security teams will review it.

Block Page Settings

If you do not wish to change anything, just use the Umbrella Default Appearance, but this setting also allows for the customization of the block page.

To edit an existing block page:

1. Hover over the name and click the Edit pen icon.

2. Select Use a Custom Appearance, then choose Create new Appearance from the drop-down list.

When you create or edit a page, give your settings an easy to remember name, such as "Corporate Block Policy."

Choose a generic message across all block pages, or customize the message per type of block page by selecting whether Blocked requests should be treated the same or differently. If you set a custom message, you may insert the [domain] variable into a custom message, which is substituted with the actual domain name that the end user attempted to browse to. You may also insert the [client_ip] variable, which shows the external IP address of the client that is hitting the block page.

If you set a custom message, you may insert the [domain] variable into a custom message, which is substituted with the actual domain name that the end user attempted to browse to

The block can also redirect to a custom URL.

If not redirecting to a custom URL, a contact form can be added to allow blocked users to contact the administrator at the email provided.

Once you've set your block page, click Next.

Step 5: Set Policy Details

Lastly, you'll reach the Policy Summary. It covers all of the modifications to the policy you just made. If you want to change anything, click the relevant Edit button and you'll jump right back to that step, or disable the feature directly from the Summary screen. When you've made the change, you can jump back to the summary directly without having to click through all the other steps (neat, right?).

1. Give your policy a meaningful name.
2. Click Edit to go back and modify settings.
3. Click Save.

Your policy is complete. As you add identities and configurations for Umbrella, you may need to tweak your policy. When you open an existing policy, the Summary screen opens, and you can jump between steps in order to make the change you need to make immediately without having to do redo the entire wizard.

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Manage Policies < Add a Policy > Policy Settings