How to enable Dynamic Categorization

Post by **Pratik** » Fri Jul 15, 2022 3:06 pm

Overview
In SafeSquid, requested URL is normally considered for categorization purposes.
However, when accessing a web page, Internet Browsers may require connecting to various other URLs to complete the portrayal of the web-page.
Requests to these dependency URLs may thus get differently categorized than the originally requested web-page.
Thus, even if the initially requested URL is included in a "Custom Category" created by you, and permitted for access, the proxy users may witness "broken pages".

Providing a satisfactory web-experience to the users, thus requires identification and explicit access permission for each of such dependency URL.
Dynamic Categorization determines requests made by Internet Browser to serve a web-page included in a Custom Category.
Custom Categories applicable to the "Referring Web-Page" are added to the list of categories determined for the requested URL.
Dynamic Categorization enables a holistic web-experience to the users, when accessing permitted web-sites.
For example, General users are permitted to access website www.example.com, it belongs to a private category missionCritical Websites.
www.example.com loads custom fonts from fonts.google.com which is a dependency website for www.exaple.com.
google.com is not permitted for general users, which will result in fonts.google.com to be denied access.

But, due to dynamic categorization fonts.google.com is allowed, as fonts.google.com is referrer to www.example.com and added to the private category missionCritical Websites along with its own category which is google.

Below are the steps on how you can enable Dynamic Categorization.
To enable dynamic categorization, open SafeSquid web interface (http://safesquid.cfg)

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Go to “Configure”

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Select “Application Setup”

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Go to “System configuration”

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Edit global policy

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Set “Dynamic Categorization” as “TRUE”

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To validate dynamic categorization search https://safesquid.com and open dev tools using (Ctrl + Shift + I or F12)
(NOTE: Here we have categorized safesquid.com into a private/ custom category. If you are unknown on how to categorize website please check our post How categorize websites )

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www.safesquid.com belongs to private category “SafeSquid”

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Check web category for api.hubspot.com which is a dependency website for www.safesquid.com.
api.hubspot.com belong to custom category “SafeSquid” along with its own category.

api.hubspot.com was added to “SafeSquid” because it was referred by www.safesquid.com

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Search for the URL https://api.hubspot.com/livechat-public/v1/.. in a different tab and look for its category.
Category for api.hubspot.com is just “Business”.

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You can create custom web category with '.' .custom_category to exclude dynamic categorization.

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Advantage of excluding dynamic categorization is when for example you have your webmail which is in a custom category and has full access which and if users receive an email which has suspicious link in it will be excluded from dynamic categorization if the webmail is in the .custom_category.