Clarification around URL Filtering licenses

[nrobison]

I just wanted a quick clarification around what you Can and Can't do without a PANDB license, I know you can create Custom URL categories without a license, but can you also use Dynamic External Block List, or can you create a security policy and manually define URLs you want to block?

Or does anything around URLs require a PANDB license 

[HULK]

Hello,

Here is few more informations regarding actions of URL license expiration or no license situation. 

With BrightCloud:

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If you are using the BrightCloud database, you can configure the action to take if the URL filtering license expires:
•
Block—Blocks access to all web sites. Upon license expiration, all URLs are blocked, not just the URL categories previously set to block.
•
Allow—Allows access to all web sites. Upon license expiration, all URLs are allowed, not just the URL categories set to allow.
With PAN-DB:

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If the license expires for PAN-DB, URL filtering is not enforced:
•
URL categories that are currently in the cache will be used to either block or allow content based on your configuration. Using cached results is a security risk because the categorization information might be stale.
•
URLs that are not in the cache will be categorized as not-resolved and will be allowed.

Hope this helps.

/Thanks

[reaper · Accepted solution]

A URL filtering license enables URL categorization.

This in turn enables you to add a URL filtering security profile to a security policy, and apply blanket cover actions to users accessing certain categories of website (eg. allow education, block questionable, pop up a 'do you want to continue' page for hacking). Or set URL categories as a destination in a security policy

custom categories and dynamic block lists etc do not require this license

[acc6d0b3610eec313831f7900fdbd235]

I personally always recommend to customers PAN-DB instead of BrightCloud.

The reason is because PAN-DB has tight integration with WildFire, in order to update URL categories such as: Malware, Phishing, and Hacking.

If you are on BrightCloud, you don’t have the benefits of this integration to feed these categories through WildFire.

[nrobison]

Thanks Guys!