In the context of our technological partnership with BrightCloud Inc, we integrated the hosted BrightCloud service and the BrightCloud Master Database into UserGate. A UserGate administrator can forbid access to sites having certain content without specifying each of those sites’ names. Additionally, it is possible to get a report from UserGate Statistics about the site categories visited, e.g. Ads, Education, News, etc. Using site categories allows more flexible policy of the Internet access management.

Categorized filtering is available for UserGate proxy services working in both transparent and non-transparent modes. If a browser on a client machine is not set for proxy use, categorized filtering will be available only when “DNS forwarding” is enabled in UserGate. Categorized filtering for NAT traffic is not implemented.

To deny access to particular categories (Fig. 21), open “Traffic policy – Traffic rules”, create a “Connection – Close” rule and specify the unwanted category on fifth page of the rule creation dialog.

Figure 21. Categorized filtering rules.