Specifications

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Creating Policies
Polices are the main building blocks in the access control architecture of the Barracuda SSL VPN.
They form the bond between a principal and a resource. This chapter covers policies, from their
purpose and usage to their unique characteristics.
By the end of this chapter the user should have a sound grasp of policy management and should be
able to implement a structured policy framework.
What is a Policy?
On its own a policy is of little worth. However, by acting as a middle layer between two entities this
makes it very powerful tool. On one side it is able to organize principals by a common goal(s) and on
the other side it collates resources of a similar purpose. This approach helps provide order in a
seemingly unstructured environment.
Principal Pool
A policy does not have to have a resource attached to it instantly. Policies in fact can also be used to
simply group together a number of principals. As shown in the ‘Example Policy Structure’ section, the
‘London Policy’ is simply a holder of principals.
Stateless
A policy is linked to a resource and a principal. Both the resource and principal can be attached to any
number of policies, there is no such thing as exclusivity. By this token any single resource or principal
has no knowledge of any other resource or principal attached to the same policy.