To anyone using Smoothwall....

[kennysarmy]

Are you all aware...

 

"Unfortunately, at the moment we only inform you that new categories have been added, not new sub-categories or amendments. I have passed this feedback on to the team."

 

 

So if new sub-categories are added under higher level categories that you deem serious enough to block then the new sub-categories don't work on inheritence, they will remain unticked until you manually go in and address.

 

 

[ITGuyNW]

Just trying to decipher that

 

Have there been new categories? Is this on premises? cloud?

[kennysarmy]

On premises. By way of example, screenshot.

[TechMonkey]

Do you know are current URLs moved into these new subcategories or are they just for new URLs?  I'm presuming that the test will highlight there is the category available if you try out a URL for banning or to see what catches it.

It is also another good reason for the at least annual filtering check, look at your categories and see if they are still fit for purpose.  It is very obvious if a category no longer has all ticked and a cursory glance would see any names not ticked that you feel should be.

 

Althought my first knee jerk reaction would be to say Smoothwall should inform all customers of these new categories, reality dictates it would be another email I would mark to read and eventually either archive or unmark as I notice it is now old.  A changes support article might be a nice thing to have, that I can have a regular look at to see what has been added or moved.  But I barely get enough to keep up with the MS update and change announcements, so filtering category changes would be a nice to have but not something I would notice not having.

[Joeloman]

Here is how it works:
If you have a subcategory—in this case, "Streaming Media"—that sits directly under the main category "Streaming Media," it will block all streaming media, even if there isn't a specific, individual signature for a given item.
For example, https://www.bilibili.com is included in the "Streaming Media" subcategory as well as in the "Bilibili" signature; therefore, in your example, it would be blocked.

 

The reason for Smoothwall to creat a signature is to allow you to set an "Allow" or "Block" rule for that specific signature—which might encompass many different domains, but only those associated with that signature.