Policy Objects
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Policy Objects

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Policy Objects

A policy object is a single object or a collective unit that groups discrete identities such as IP addresses, URLs, applications, or users. With policy objects that are a collective unit, you can reference the object in security policy instead of manually selecting multiple objects one at a time. Typically, when creating a policy object, you group objects that require similar permissions in policy. For example, if your organization uses a set of server IP addresses for authenticating users, you can group the set of server IP addresses as an address group policy object and reference the address group in the security policy. By grouping objects, you can significantly reduce the administrative overhead in creating policies.
If you need to export specific parts of the configuration for internal review or audit, you can Export Configuration Table Data as a PDF or CSV file.
You can create the following policy objects on the firewall:
Policy Object
Description
Address/Address Group, Region
Allow you to group specific source or destination addresses that require the same policy enforcement. The address object can include an IPv4 or IPv6 address (single IP, range, subnet), an IP wildcard address (IPv4 address/wildcard mask) or the FQDN. Alternatively, a region can be defined by the latitude and longitude coordinates or you can select a country and define an IP address or IP range. You can then group a collection of address objects to create an address group object.
You can also use dynamic address groups to dynamically update IP addresses in environments where host IP addresses change frequently.
The predefined External Dynamic Lists (EDLs) on the firewall count toward the maximum number of address objects that a firewall model supports.
User/User Group
Allow you to create a list of users from the local database, an external database, or match criteria and group them.
Application Group and Application Filter
An Application Filter allows you to filter applications dynamically. It allows you to filter, and save a group of applications using the attributes defined in the application database on the firewall. For example, you can Create an Application Filter by one or more attributes—category, sub-category, technology, risk, characteristics. With an application filter, when a content update occurs, any new applications that match your filter criteria are automatically added to your saved application filter.
An Application Group allows you to create a static group of specific applications that you want to group together for a group of users or for a particular service, or to achieve a particular policy goal. See Create an Application Group.
Service/Service Groups
Allows you to specify the source and destination ports and protocol that a service can use. The firewall includes two pre-defined services—service-http and service-https— that use TCP ports 80 and 8080 for HTTP, and TCP port 443 for HTTPS. You can however, create any custom service on any TCP/UDP port of your choice to restrict application usage to specific ports on your network (in other words, you can define the default port for the application).
To view the standard ports used by an application, in ObjectsApplications search for the application and click the link. A succinct description displays.