Best way to manage Dropbox

[GLO-ISO]

I am looking for a good way to manage the use of dropbox. Ideally I would like to deny all and allow particular people to access.  Any help on this would be great.

[panos]

did you try to block/allow this app. using ssl decryption at corresponding traffic.

[blarney]

are you using the userID agent? PA will allow for userID as a policy variable. Policy 1 allows those userIDs for application dropbox and Policy 2 is set to deny all for dropbox. A captive portal may also work if your user base is ok with the extra step.

one problem that would remain is that, for those that are dropped, there is no warning message that dropbox is blocked. The browser will just load saying page not found or unreachable.

[IkramBaharum]

useragent ID is the best way to manage this.

if you don't have a large environment, you can probably resort to allow certain ip addresses to dropbox while denying others to it.

[mbutt · Accepted solution]

You can do this in two different ways

1. In the security policy allow only particular IP address to application dropbox and in the next policy deny drop box for the rest of the users.

2. If you are using user id and your ip addressing is being handled by dhcp then you can allow certain users in the security policy to allow dropbox and in the next policy deny the rest of the users.

Let us know if this helps.Thanks

[Laurent_Dormond]

Hello,

Assuming that Dropbox (or any file sharing app) is potentially a threat vector, what if I want to allow particular users (UserID OK) to only access particular dropbox "project" (that is, a particular dropbox URL).

For example, I want to deny Dropbox in my organization, but allow access to people that need dropbox for particular, time limited project. That is, I want to allow users x and y to only access

https://www.dropbox.com/l/scl/AACSDD87F6G8H4FD_H3KyIsv2ZX-57qgAVB1iSDF8as8

for their project ?

Regards,

Laurent

[bradk14]

if you want to create policy based on full URLs, you need to have SSL decryption in place.

[Laurent_Dormond]

Ok actually I just tried to limit Dropbox access to particular URL's but Dropbox URLs are longer than 255 characters which PanOS is not able to handle.