7

 

 

Figure 2. SonicWALL CSM 2100 CF

 

Critical features and associated benefits

Whether evaluating and selecting an integrated content management solution or a standalone appliance,

customers can identify superior solutions as those that offer many of features described in this section. The

features cover the three key functional requirements of a secure content management solution protection,

productivity and liability while also providing scalability and ease of administration. At the end of this

section, Table 1 summarizes the features by these categories.

Policy Management

Policy management features provide businesses with complete content management control by allowing

network administrators to override policies for specific sites. An administrator can provide access to an

individual site whose rating is disallowed by categorizing it as an allowed domain. For example, a Web

design team might be allowed access to some online shopping sites for researching interactive e-commerce

solutions and user interface designs.

Similarly, to block a site that does not fall into one of the specified categories, the administrator should be

able to tag it as a blocked domain. For instance, a sports site might be added to the list of blocked domains

to maintain productivity during times when popular sporting events are happening.

Content management solutions can also allow administrators to designate certain users and guests to be

given bypassed access that disregards the filter policy. Unfiltered Web access can be extended using a pre-

defined username/password combination with bypass privileges, or the administrator could alternatively

create a custom account.

Superior content management solutions offer the ability to create multiple polices representing different

filtering levels. This gives administrators the flexibility to enforce custom policies for groups of users on the

network. For example, businesses might want one policy for supply chain managers and another for office

administrators. Similarly, network administrators may require different policies for different departments

within a company. Network administrators should be able to choose the hours during which specific content