Application Control tab

Click the Application Control tab in the policy to configure social web controls for your end users. This tab is available for Forcepoint Web Security Cloud only.

To use the options on the Application Control tab, you must enable Real-time Security Classification on the Web Content & Security tab. See the Web Content & Security tab.

Social web controls enable you to safely fine-tune access to popular sites within social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. For each available site, you can specify whether users can access particular functions within the site, such as posting a comment or joining a group. For example, you may want to allow users to access their Facebook page, but not to upload photos or videos to the site.

The following filtering actions are available for social web controls:

Do not block. This ensures that the function is not blocked, unless the category to which the parent site belongs has the action Block access. If you select Do not block for a function and the parent site is blocked on the Web Categories tab, a popup warning appears when you save your changes.

Block access. This blocks the function and depending on the nature of the function, either displays the block page that you select, stops the function from working, or displays an error message.

The functions specific to each site are grouped together. If you set a particular filtering action for the parent application (for example, Twitter), it is also applied to all child functions for that application. You can subsequently change the action for individual functions.

Top-level sites related to the social web controls remain classified and filtered under their existing categories on the Web Categories tab. For example, Facebook Chat is classified as Web Chat. You can only apply social web controls to a site if its corresponding web or custom category allows access or does not block the site.

If the top-level site is part of a category that has quota time applied to it, application controls are applied according to your configuration when the user is in a quota period. Similarly, if the site is in a category has the Confirm action applied to it, application controls are applied according to your configuration once the user has clicked Continue.

To configure application controls:

Select an application from the Applications list.

You can select an application directly from the list, or enter text in the search box to locate the application you want.

To select multiple applications, use the Shift and/or Ctrl keys. You can also use the drop-down menu above the Applications list to select or deselect all applications.

Select an Action for the category. Note that if you have selected a parent application (for example Facebook or Twitter), the action you select also applies to all the controls within that application by default.

If you have selected Block access, select a block page to display.

Click Save.