Application Categories

The system is capable of discovering thousands of apps; these are divided in to categories of ease of reference. Categorization of discoverable apps is conducted by a team of researchers, and based on similarities among apps as well as a number of other quantitative application feature sets.

The GUI displays application categories when you:

• Create a Web Application Setting
• Create a DNS Application Setting
• Delete an Application Setting
• Choose to include or exclude applications from a Data Loss Prevention Policy Real Time Rule

When the GUI displays a list of categories, not all the categories listed below may appear; a category will not appear in a menu if that category is not currently populated with any apps.

Category Descriptions

Discovered apps are assigned to the following categories:

• Ad Publishing—Applications that enable publishers and ad networks to manage ad serving and trafficking.
• Anonymizer—Services that provide an anonymous proxy tool that attempts to make activity on the Internet untraceable.
• Application Development and Testing—Applications suited for application development and testing cycles, or for building integration applications in the cloud and within the enterprise.
• Backup and Recovery—Applications for backup and recovery of file systems and raw data stores on servers and desktop systems.
• Business Intelligence—Applications for analytics such as dashboards, reporting systems, scenario modeling, and data analysis.
• Cloud Broker—Applications that manage the use, performance, and delivery of cloud services and negotiate relationships between cloud providers and cloud consumers.
• Cloud Carrier—Intermediary that provides connectivity and transport of cloud services between cloud consumers and cloud providers through a network, telecommunication, and other access devices.
• Cloud Service Provider—Based on NIST definition of a cloud service, which we believe is being (slowly) adopted as the industry standard. The NIST definition includes the following criteria: on-demand self-service, rapid elasticity, and measured service. CASI additionally adds vendor intent to provide computing-related services (Compute, Network, Storage and/or Software Application). If in doubt whether web or cloud, we will be conservative and assume cloud until we can prove otherwise.
• Cloud Storage—Applications that offer massively scalable storage capacity that can be used for applications, and file storage.
• Collaboration—Applications that enhance communication and collaboration in workgroups, within enterprises, and across enterprises.
• Compute—Fundamental computing resources for running cloud-based systems that can be dynamically provisioned and configured as needed.
• Content Delivery Network (CDN)—Applications that store content and files to improve the performance and cost of delivering content for web-based systems by offering a large distributed system of servers deployed in multiple data centers across the Internet.
• Content Management—Applications for managing the production of and access to content, enforcing document production workflows, and providing workspaces for groups or enterprises to find and access documents.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)—Applications that manage interactions with current and future customers, including organization and automation across sales, marketing, and customer service functions.
• Database Management—Applications offering scalable data management solutions for structured or unstructured data, relational database solutions or scalable non-SQL datastores.
• E-Commerce—Applications that facilitate the buying and selling of products or services.
• Education—Applications that provide educational or training courses, general learning opportunities or specific employee training independent of their location.
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)—Applications that manage operations or management of a business; which can include internal and external resources, including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources.
• Financial Services—Applications for managing financial processes and information.
• Games—Online and mobile games.
• Generative AI—Applications that enable access to large language models (LLM) and artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
• Healthcare—Applications that provide access to health, medical, and personal fitness systems.
• Hosting Services—Applications that enable corporate or individual websites or other content to be accessible over the internet.
• Human Resources—Applications for managing human resources and HR functions.
• IT Service Management—Applications that support specific IT functions to plan, deliver, operate and control IT services.
• Legal—Applications that provide access to legal documents and public records and support legal content.
• Marketing & Sales—Applications that are specifically designed for marketing and sales functions.
• Media—Applications that host or stream media as a service.
• Office Productivity—Applications for producing information and other standard office-oriented tasks such as documentation, presentations, project management, and so on.
• Others—Used for those services where no existing categorization would fit.
• P2P—Peer to Peer torrents like apps and protocols.
• Search—Web or app-based search.
• Security—Applications that support security activities to ensure adherence to regulatory compliance rules and protect information, data applications, and infrastructure.
• Service Management—Applications that support general operational activities outside of the IT function.
• Shopping—Web or app-based basic online shopping.
• Social Networking—Applications that establish and maintain a connection among users that are tied in one or more specific types of interdependency.
• Software Repository—Software repositories.
• Support—Applications that provide access to customer support services.
• Travel—Applications that provide travel management services.
• Web Content—Mostly app-based services that provide content. It can be through a login or paid portal.
  For more information and a list of supported applications, see Apps with Advanced App Controls.

Delete an Application Setting < Application Categories > Manage Advanced App Controls