With the new Application Control security service (introduced with Fireware XTM v11.4), you can exercise fine-grained control over more than 1,800 applications, organized by category. Application Control uses a frequently-updated set of signatures to stay current with the latest applications and application versions. We recommend that you enable the automatic signature update feature or, to manually update the signatures on your XTM device, connect to your device with Firebox System Manager and select the Security Subscriptions tab. When you update signatures, both your IPS and Application Control signatures are updated.
When you configure Application Control, or when you look at Application Control reports, you might see application names you are not familiar with. To get information about any application that Application Control can identify, you can look up the application at http://www.watchguard.com/SecurityPortal/AppDB.aspx. We recommend that you review the online help and refer to the Getting Started with Application Control guide to learn more about the features of Application Control.
Many web-based applications are accessible through SSL (HTTPS), as well as HTTP. Organizations offer SSL connections to provide more security to users by encrypting communications. SSL encryption can also make applications more difficult to detect for Application Control. When you block applications, you may also need to specifically block the SSL login for that application to make sure that you block all access to that application.
For example, when you select to block the application Google Finance, this blocks users from using Google’s financial applications. It does not, however, block them from using Google Finance over SSL. To block that, you must also select the option for Google Authentication over SSL. It is important to understand that, once you block Google Authentication over SSL, all Google applications over SSL are blocked. For example, access to Google Docs and Gmail over SSL is also blocked.
Similar behavior may occur for some Microsoft and Yahoo applications when they are accessed over SSL. There are corresponding signatures for Authentication over SSL for Microsoft and Yahoo and many other applications in the Application Control application list. Companies may want to block SSL access to applications and then configure granular controls over the HTTP access that is allowed.
For a complete list of Known Issues related to Application Control, see the Known Issues/Security Subscriptions section below.