My Check Point CCSA Journal: Check Point 1140 Application Control & URL Filtering

I still haven’t fully activated my Check Point 1140 online yet and got some few days left before the Software Blade trial license expires. You can check the Software Blade license status under Home tab and select License. So I started testing the Application Control & URL Filtering feature on this appliance.

To activate Application Control & URL Filtering, go to Access Policy tab > Blade Control > click On under Application & URL Filtering. The Block security risk categories was already selected by default so I ticked Block inappropriate content and Block file sharing applications and then clicked Apply.

After the Applications & URL Filtering was enabled (On), an update became available. I clicked Update now to get the latest update from Check Point’s database. The update took around 4 minutes and you’ll see the status changed from Updating to Up to date.

I went through some “illegal” websites and got a Page Blocked error saying that access to the site is not permitted. It also indicates which category the website falls under and that the page blocking was due the Application Control feature.

I also tried to Block other undesired application such as Blogger, eBay and Facebook.

To verify Application Control & URL Filtering is working, go to Logs & Monitoring tab (look under the Blade column) and double-click the selected log in order to view more details.

I also tried to the Limit bandwidth consuming applications and set 1 Kbps for both Download and Upload. The High Bandwidth, P2P File Sharing, Media Sharing and Media Streams were already added by default.

I tried watching a video on Youtube but it only kept on loading. The configured 1 Kbps Download/Upload limit made it impossible for the video to stream properly.