Simplified Application-Layer Traffic Control (Access rules)

• Back to main proxy section

With Artica’s intuitive rule engine, you instantly gain granular, firewall-style control over every HTTP request flowing through your network. 
In just a few clicks, you can build policies that Match by Source ( IP Address or CIDR range, Client Hostname (wildcards or regex), MAC Address on the wire) and Match by Destination ( URL Categories (malware, social media, streaming, etc.) and Domain names or prefixes

This feature is available on Artica 4.50 Service Pack 3 or Artica v450 Service Pack 2 HotFix 20250509-00

Access Rules

Access rules let you modify your proxy’s behavior in three ways:

• Allow Access: Tells the proxy that requests does not require authentication and will pass through all advanced rules. 
  The request is still subject to the Web filtering service.
• Deny Access: Tells the proxy to block access to the resource.
   The proxy can reject the connection, display an error page, or redirect the request elsewhere.
• ACL Object: Converts this rule into an ACL object that can be used within your advanced ACL rules.
   
• Create a Rule.
  Click here to learn how to create a proxy rule to block, allow, or tag requests.
   
• ACL Object (Tag) Rule
  An ACL Object rule becomes a named object that advanced ACLs can reference. 
  Think of it as nesting one ACL inside another: you define a reusable criterion once, then include it (or negate it) within your more complex, advanced ACL configurations for greater precision and manageability.

Rules items

Rule elements are organized into two categories:

• Incoming criteria
  Which focus on the clients connecting to the proxy
   
• Outgoing criteria
  Which target the destination domains and categories

Error page

• Tune the error page
  The error page is an HTML-formatted message that is displayed when the rule blocks access.
   

Rules privileges

• Role-based access control (RBAC) for access rules
  Each rule can be tied to an administrator group defined in Active Directory. 
  This lets dedicated teams maintain each rule.
   
• What does a user in a group with assigned rules (as privileges) see?
  When you assign rules to a user group, every member of that group can log in to the Artica Web Console and immediately inherit the privileges defined by those rules.