topic Re: Allow streaming-media for training sites that use youtube links in General Topics

Allow streaming-media for training sites that use youtube links

drischar — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 13:59:53 GMT

One of out departments recently purchased access to an online training site that uses youtube to play some of the videos within the courses. We block all streaming-media on our network as a general rule on our PA 3020. I would like to allow access to the vidoes within the training courses without oppening up the rest of youtube to these users. I have seen some people suggesting we allow the specific url of the video which are in the courses but the site has around 200 courses and I dont really want to go through each one and pull the vidoe's URL. Is there a way to allow a certain URL-category based on how you get to it (i.e. users could get to the youtube vidoes from the training course but no if they were to go from youtube directly.)

Re: Allow streaming-media for training sites that use youtube links

BPry — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 14:45:51 GMT

I don't believe the process of how they access the application would matter much if you are blocking the app-id for Youtube. Like others have staded you could whitelist the specific URLs or you could try and see if there is the possibility of creating a custom signature that would be allowed but only having access to the one 'channel' that I'm sure all of these videos are under; I've never created such a signature so I don't know if there would be anything identifiable that you could build the packet on.

You might be able to allow users access to the specific URL of the training course 'channel' (youtube.com/channel/training) or whatever it is and see if that works. My guess would be no, but it never hurts to try.

Re: Allow streaming-media for training sites that use youtube links

Brandon_Wertz — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 16:27:10 GMT

@drischar You could probably create a custom application that looks in the HTTP header for a refer to Youtube from the training site. Use that custom application in a new security rule and that would prevent the need to whitelist.