Working with filters

Profiles provide a management facility for packaging and distributing filters to your devices. Filters provide information and instructions for the devices protecting your network against malicious attacks. These filters enable your devices to monitor and respond to network traffic according to a particular pillar, or type. These pillars separate filters into types that apply to different attacks and sections of your network. You can create, modify, and manage these filters to block and protect against malicious attacks and piracy of your bandwidth and network services. Each filter consists of customizable options and settings that detail how the system should monitor, investigate, process, and block traffic.

If the SMS identifies traffic that matches a filter, it responds to that traffic based on the instructions defined in the action set for the filter. All action sets require a flow control action—the SMS can block, permit, or react in a combination of ways to the traffic. As an added measure of safety and information dissemination, you can configure alerts to inform interested parties about detection and responses to malicious attacks and usage by notifying the SMS or by sending emails to specified email addresses. You can also log information about matching traffic to a packet trace log or a remote syslog server for review and reporting.

All filters are assigned to protect a segment on your system. When you change the settings of these filters, only the target distribution segments receives the changes. You can also create Segment Groups. Learn more.