Quality of Brightcloud URL categorisation or lack of.

[robert.b]

Hello

Has anyone else found that there are a large number of websites being classified as Job Search when they are blatantly not? We are finding this to be the case and in fact are generally finding the classifications to be a bit hit and miss in places. Our previous URL filtering solution used the Smartfilter database and we never really had any problems with that.

Any opinions??

Thanks

[bpappas]

I am assuming that you have already verified that you are running the 3.1.6 PA software and the most up to date Brightcloud database (3491 is the latest version as of Nov 29, 2010).

If you are completely up to date on software and URL filtering database versions and still seeing this issue, you should open a case with PA technical support to resolve any issues where the database version on the firewall and the Brightcloud firewall are the same, but the query result is different.

[migration]

I have to say that the Brightcloud URL Categorization needs quite some work. I have also experienced many categorization errors. Even when we re-categorizing these sites and they change, I have had a few that have gone back to the original category.

I think in my opinion it is time to use another vendor for your URL filtering, as the Brightcloud URL Filtering is quite weak in comparison to others out there. Or Brightcloud really needs to look at their competitors categories and the accuracy.

[CWillms]

Upgrade to 3.1.6 scheduled for this weekend!

Thanks for the advice.

[djbisbey]

Today, all of a sudden (3.1.6) users are hitting the not-resolved url issue, then these sites were working perfectly yesterday.

I am not sure if I should raise a ticket for this or not?

Wondering if its brightcloud or palo?

Thx

Darren

[nrice]

Hi Darren,

Please open a case.  There are no known issues with BrightCloud at this time.

[ajhawkins]

We've noticed similar issues as those mentioned in this thread.  Specifically, deltas between the most recent URL update, and what bright cloud actually says.  Also, we see recently that lots of URLs are not found locally and the firewall is consistently going to brightcloud for dynamic updates, in several cases the firewall has stopped routing all traffic until it gave up trying to get a dynamic categorization.

[uduwawalan]

Hi,

After going to version 4.3 and coincidentally changing our ISP seem to have brought on an avalanche of "not-resolved" errors.

I note though that there is a mention of a 5 second response time requirement from Brightcloud before this verdict is delivered. Hmmm...

I have made requests in the past to Brightcloud for URL re-categorisation and have received decent responses. However I agree that Brightcloud is not proactive ( not quick enough in this regard) in it's categorisation work. We had to send a whole list of IP addresses that microsoft (and yahoo) use to host their skydrive files so that students could download their work. I find that when MS / Yahoo add to this pool we had to keep sending these to Brightcloud.

I have seen other more obvious ones not being categorised properly as well.

We use custom URL categories to get over this. We have set up categories such as universal allow / deny , staff allow / deny and students allow / deny. These are then tied to policies that filter pages for these user types.

Nalin.