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Hi, first time posting here, please be gentle ;)
Got a problem with Websense 7.6 - We have a category set up to allow certain social networking sites (i.e. twitter but not facebook) called "Social Networking Permitted Access" - for some reason, our Websense thinks http://www.icon-training.com should be in this category and is blocking a user who wishes to access the site because they're not in the group allowing access to URLs in that category.
Main problem is, it's NOT in that category.
I've checked this repeatedly, it's in our 'Corporate Whitelist' category. But whenever you check the url category, it reports the following:
http://www.icon-training.com
I've tried adding then removing the url from the "Social Networking Permitted Access" category (I had to remove it from the whitelist category first as it KNEW it was there and refused to allow me to do this at first) to try to make it realise it had been removed from that category, but to no avail. Still reported it being in that category.
I even made a NEW category, exported the URLs to an xls file, removed "Social Networking Permitted Access" category, copied the exported urls to the new 'Allowed Social Networking' category (making certain this url wasn't amongst them, which it was as it didn't complain it was already in the whitelist category), hoping that it was an issue with the "Social Networking Permitted Access" category.
Guess what? After doing all that, it's now reporting:
So, even though;
1. It's a NEW category, which has nothing to do with icon-training.com,
2. The URL is in the whitelist,
it's now (incorrectly) saying it's in the new Social Networking category when it was previously saying it was (incorrectly) in the Social Networking Permitted Access category.
I've been going round and round in circles on this one, not sure I'm making sense any more.
Hopefully you've got the gist from my ramblings.
Anyone have any suggestions?
(I'd rather not have to resort to putting the URL as unfiltered if it can be made to work correctly)
BCBCRob: Hi, first time posting here, please be gentle ;)
BCBCRob: Category: Allowed Social Networking
Please list the urls in this category. Often times, a recategorization of something smaller could interfere with a longer name site.
For example, i noticed the end of the site is "ing.com". Often times, people recategorize "ING.COM" which is a banking type site. Or, NING.com, which is a social media site. Since Websense could match www.icon-training.com with "ning.com", I could see how that could be your error.
The fix is simple. By default, CustomURLDomainMatch is set to off in EIMSERVER.INI. The URL http://update.com will match http://microsoftupdate.com or http://<prefix>.update.com etc.
If you turn this parameter on, the customer URL http://update.com will NOT match http://microsoftupdate.com, but match http://<prefix>.update.com, which is just like http://.update.com with a leading dot that matches http://<prefix>.update.com. It should block based on domain name.
1. In the \websense\bin directory, change the following option in eimserver.ini from off to on:
[FilteringManager]CustomUrlDomainMatch=on
2. Restart the filtering service to implement the change.
JACOB SLOAN, CCNA, WCSE
Ohhhhh, thank you thank you thank you, that sounds so much like that's the problem, has to be that!
I can't make that change right now, unfortunately, as the service has to be restarted out of hours, but yes, we have ning.com in the social media category, so your explanation seems bang on the money.
(This is what we currently have in the "Allowed Social Networking" category, btw:
http://del.ico.ushttps://del.ico.ushttp://flickr.comhttps://flickr.comhttp://hootsuite.comhttps://hootsuite.comhttp://myspace.comhttps://myspace.comhttp://ning.comhttps://ning.comhttp://si0.twimg.comhttps://si0.twimg.comhttp://twimg.comhttps://twimg.comhttp://twimg0-a.akamaihd.nethttps://twimg0-a.akamaihd.nethttp://twitpic.comhttps://twitpic.comhttp://twitter.comhttps://twitter.comhttp://wordpress.comhttps://wordpress.comhttp://wp.comhttps://wp.com )
Looks like my predecessor had resorted to putting the following URLs (amongst others) into the unfiltered URLS list:
http://business.microsoftelearning.comhttp://gatewaystolearning.comhttp://itectraining.comhttp://www.haysonlinetraining.comhttp://edexcel.e-dunning.comhttp://granada-learning.comhttp://ldalearning.comhttp://cieh-elearning.com
So, suspect he probably had the same problem with those as I've been having here and I think we have our culprit!
I've checked EIMSERVER.INI and can confirm (like there was any doubt at this point) that it IS currently set to:
CustomUrlDomainMatch=off
I've amended that now, but as I say, I can't reload the services until out-of-hours, so I'll have to wait til the server's nightly reload before I can be sure it's solved it.
But anyway, thank you so much for this, been bashing my head against this for a while now; I can at least switch to kicking myself for not spotting it being that now, so that'll make a change.
For some reason, my reply to this still hasn't turned up, guess either it's not been approved yet or it just disappeared into the ether. I had said it sounds like that's exactly the cause but I couldn't confirm immediately as I can't restart the services until 'out-of-hours', so was going to have to wait for overnight server reload.
Since then, the server has been reloaded, changes took effect and all has been fine (and I've been able to remove a load of other URL's from the unfiltered list as a result) so thanks for that, I've now gone from bashing my head against the problem to kicking myself for not noticing all the problem urls ended with 'ning.com'. It's obvious when you see it, isn't it? ;)
Cheers again!
