Web Security vs URL access management profiles

[MalakIbrahim_NL]

Hello,

I'm curious about the distinctions between Web Security (SWG) and URL access management profiles (Web filtering).  when is it appropriate to use each one? Additionally, I'm interested in knowing if they can be implemented simultaneously and what the best practices and use cases would be for such a scenario.

[reaper]

the SWG is a proxy that provides connectivity via a browser's proxy configuration

URL access management/web filtering is layer7 inspection of what websites you're trying to reach

you can have your users connect to the internet via 'regular' routing (via globalprotect, a RN connection etc), or you can configure their proxy to send web requests to the SWG but keep routing other protocols via their local internet breakout

web filtering can be applied to both methods to restrict which websites the users are allowed to access

[MalakIbrahim_NL]

If I understand you correctly, SWG supports only Explicit Proxy (EP) while web filter supports both GP and EP. in this case web filter covers everything that SWG offers, then what would be the added value for SWG over URL access?

[reaper]

SWG (=EP) is a direct alternative to GlobalProtect, not URL filtering

SWG can be used in cases where an endpoint is for example incapable of supporting a VPN client, but can be configured to use a proxy (IoT, OT, SCADA,..)