What if a security blade is not the policy source?

A Websense X10G security blade that is not serving as the policy source can be designated to run either user directory and filtering or filtering only. A blade in either of these settings must point to a policy source blade or server.

A user directory and filtering security blade is a secondary blade, a lightweight version of the policy source machine. It runs:

Policy Server

User Service

Usage Monitor

Filtering Service

Directory Agent

Control Service

Content Gateway (Web Security Gateway)

Network Agent (optional on blade in slot 16 only)

Having User Service and Policy Server together on a security blade means that you are able to obtain local network user names. Latency between User Service and Policy Server is eliminated, because both run on the same blade.

Whenever you make a policy change in the TRITON management console, that change is immediately updated on the policy source blade. The change is pushed out to user directory and filtering blades within 30 seconds.

These security blades can continue filtering for as long as 14 days if their connection with the policy source machine is interrupted. So even if a network connection is poor or is lost, filtering continues as expected.

A filtering-only blade does not run Policy Server. It runs only:

Filtering Service

Control Service

Websense Content Gateway (Web Security Gateway)

Network Agent (optional on blade in slot 16 only))

Security blades that run filtering only typically work best when they are close to the policy source and on the same network.

These blades require a continual connection to the centralized policy source, not only to stay current, but also to continue filtering. If the connection to the policy source machine becomes unavailable for any reason, filtering on a filtering only blade can continue for up to 3 hours.

If the policy source machine is on a remote network, with a WAN connection, it can be difficult to obtain user name/IP address maps for the local users.