User Guide

OmniVista SafeGuard Manager Administration Guide
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Chapter 5: Device Configuration
Policies
Policies are the rules that govern user access and resources. Policies are used to establish
the boundaries and enforce a security philosophy for these users and resources.
OmniVista SafeGuard Manager supports the following policies:
■ Malware policies—Specify how the infection is handled when SafeGuard detects
malware on the host. These policies allow you to set how little or how much
access a user or an application can have on the network when an infection is
suspected.
You can set up malware policies to block the infected user or application, or allow
the end device to communicate to an IT server or Internet website for automatic
upload of the most recent anti-virus software or OS patch. When the infection is
specific to a particular application, malware policies allow traffic from other
applications to continue unimpeded.
■ User policies—Allow user access to network resources and applications based on
the authentication state of the user. When a user logs on to the network, the
machine starts authentication using the username, password credentials, IP
address, MAC address, authentication state, and user role. Using a set of
configured role mapping rules and information intercepted from the
authentication server, a user role is derived for the user. The system uses the role
and the configured role mapping rules. Using a role hierarchical system, it applies
all of the policies or rules for that particular user based on the user role. A user role
is a designation for the user, usually a job classification such as a software
engineer.
Each policy comprises of multiple rules (filters), which is how the traffic is
matched. A rule has two parts: a filter and an action. When a filter condition is
true, its action might be to allow access or deny access to a resource. For example,
all engineers might be allowed access to the engineering servers but restricted
from accessing Finance or Human Resources servers.
■ System policies—SafeGuard has a set of default policies and roles that are
primarily used by internal routines. These policies cannot normally be configured
by the user.
■ Override policies—Policies that take precedence over system policies. In the rare
case where it is necessary to temporarily override a system policy, create an
override policy. These policies have a higher ranking than system policies and are
executed after malware policies
■ EPV policies—EPV helps ensure that a user’s system and virus software are kept
up-to-date. End point Posture Verification (EPV) is a component of SafeGuard OS
that validates software compliance. EPV policies are the mechanisms that control