Blocked Web Sites
GU has firewalls in place that are based on technology from Palo Alto Networks. These firewalls participate in a worldwide firewall filtering engine that provides real time analysis based on a global database. Because of this, a site can be blocked without UIS being aware.
To verify if a site is malicious and being blocked by this engine visit http://urlfiltering.paloaltonetworks.com
Enter the address of the site in question in the URL box and click search.
IDENTIFY IF THE SITE IS BLOCKED
If the category is “high risk” or "malware" then the site will be blocked by the GU Network. This block is unable to be changed by UIS. However, a request can be made to Palo Alto to reclassify the site. See below for those steps.
HOW TO REQUEST A CHANGE TO A SITE
Click the link that says, “Request Change”. It is recommended that the OWNER of the site in question fill out this form.
Any site that is blocked is also blocked on other networks that leverage palo technologies. Because of this Palo Alto will reach out to the owner of the site to clear up any issues.
This will take some time and is handled by Palo Alto not UIS. Once it’s unblocked the site will be accessible on the GU network.
SITE SAYS, “LOW RISK” BUT IS STILL BLOCKED
If the URL Filtering site categorizes the site as “low risk” and it still appears to be blocked. Please first verify from an on-campus connection that the site it’s not being displayed.
You will see a message like the one above if you attempt to access the site from an on-campus machine.
If a site is blocked and the category is “low risk”, or you see a different message than what is above please escalate the ticket to the data security team so that they can review. In these cases, the site could be blocked by another security policy, or some other issue may be preventing access.