Editing an Access Control Policy

When you edit an access control policy, you should lock it to ensure that your changes do not get overridden by another person who might edit it simultaneously.

You can only edit access control policies that were created in the current domain. Also, you cannot edit settings that are locked by an ancestor access control policy.

Note

If you do not lock the policy, consider the following: Only one person should edit a policy at a time, using a single browser window. If multiple users save the same policy, the last saved changes are retained. For your convenience, the system displays information on who (if anyone) is currently editing each policy. To protect the privacy of your session, a warning appears after 30 minutes of inactivity on the policy editor. After 60 minutes, the system discards your changes.

Procedure


Step 1

Choose Policies > Access Control.

Step 2

Click Edit (edit icon) next to the access control policy you want to edit.

If View (View button) appears instead, the configuration belongs to an ancestor domain, or you do not have permission to modify the configuration.

Step 3

Edit your access control policy.

Tip

You can operate on multiple rules at one time by selecting their checkboxes in the left column, then selecting the action you want to perform from the Select Action drop-down list next to the search box. Bulk editing is available for enabling and disabling, copying, cloning, moving, deleting, and editing rules, or viewing hit counts or related events.

You can change the following settings or perform these actions:

  • Name and Description—Click Edit (edit icon) next to the name, make your changes, and click Save.

  • Default Action—Choose a value from the Default Action drop-down list.

  • Default Action Settings—Click Cog (cog icon), make your changes, and click OK. You can configure settings for logging, the location of an external syslog server or SNMP trap server, and the variable set associated with an intrusion prevention default action.

  • Associated Policies—To edit or change policies in the packet flow, click the policy type in the packet flow representation below the policy name. You can select the Prefilter Rules, Decryption, Security Intelligence, and Identity policies. When necessary, click Access Control to return to the access control rules.

  • Policy Assignment—To identify the managed devices targeted by this policy, or enforce this policy in a subdomain, click the Targeted: x devices link.

  • Rules—To manage access control rules, and to inspect and block malicious traffic using intrusion and file policies, click Add Rule, or right-click an existing rule and select Edit or another appropriate action. The actions are also available from the More (more icon) button for each rule. See Create and Edit Access Control Rules.

  • Layout—Use the Grid/Table View icon above the list of rules to change the layout. Grid view provides color-coded objects in an easy-to-see layout. Table view provides a summary list so that you can see more rules at once. You can freely switch views without impacting the rules.

  • Columns (Table view only)—Click the Show/Hide Columns icon above the list of rules to select which information to show in the table. Click Hide Empty Columns to quickly remove all columns that have no information, that is, you are not using those conditions in any rule. Click Revert to Default to undo all of your customizations.

  • Analyze rule logic. You can select the following options from the Analyze menu to examine the logic of your rules:

    • Hit Count—To view statistics on how many connections matched each rule.

    • Enable/Disable Rule Conflicts—Select whether you want to see information on whether rules interfere with each other.

    • Show Rule Conflicts—See whether you have redundant or shadowed rules. These conflicts could prevent certain rules from ever being matched by connections, meaning either that you need to fix the match criteria, move the rule, or simply delete the rule.

    • Show Warnings—See whether there are rules with configuration issues that you need to address.

  • Additional Settings—To change additional settings for the policy, select one of the following options from the More drop-down arrow at the end of the packet flow line.

Step 4

Click Save.


What to do next

  • Deploy configuration changes.