Blocking embedded videos

[Van35T]

Is there a way to block embedded videos on websites such as CNN or Foxnews from playing using either L7 or content filtering?

I don't necessarily want to block the website as a whole, but watching the videos has become an issue in my office and the big boss has had enough.

[BrechtSchamp]

If you can find out the urls on which the content is hosted then yes. But to be honest this is going to be a pain to maintain...

You could throttle the news category so the movies become unwatchable, that might dissuade people to do it. Something like this with a group policy called "Bandwidth abusers" in Network wide > Group Policies:

Don't forget to apply it to the clients of course.

Or you could also do it network wide in the "default traffic shaping" rules. Security & SD-WAN > SD-WAN & Traffic Shaping.

[MMoss]

@BrechtSchamp 

If you use "ALL NEWS" it'll block the news site in it's entirety. Wouldn't "Streaming Media" be the better option to block the embedded video's? In my experience it's not uncommon for video's to be hosted elsewhere than the main website, many directly on YouTube depending on the site. Larger ones might not as much but other will. "Web Hosting" may cover this as well, but I'm not certain.

If it's just a matter of bandwidth and not because it violates some sort of policy then you may want to go into SD-WAN & Traffic Shaping and just set streaming media as the lowest priority so it is only usable if noting as priority on it, and since everything has priority it's unlikely anyhow. Aside from that you could just assign it the lowest amount of bandwidth so it doesn't work lol. There are options, but I don't know how large r narrow of a scope you are looking for and the ultimate goal.

[BlakeRichardson]

This question comes up a lot on the various forums I am part of. My usual response is if the company is small make it an HR problem, get the boss to warn everyone verbally and follow up with an email and then anyone that breaks the rules is dealt with by management.

For larger companies that isn't as effective and you would be best the block where the videos are hosted.

[BrechtSchamp]

---

@MMoss wrote:

If you use "ALL NEWS" it'll block the news site in it's entirety. Wouldn't "Streaming Media" be the better option to block the embedded video's? In my experience it's not uncommon for video's to be hosted elsewhere than the main website, many directly on YouTube depending on the site.

---

Good point. Tbh I'd just analyse the traffic patterns a bit via the pie charts available in dashboard. You'll be able to identify the bandwidth hog apps and users easily.

[MMoss]

@BrechtSchamp I do like the Traffic Analyse breakdown, unfortunately with the way content is hosted it's difficult to track down what coming from where. Even then because it's hosted you can't really block it because you never know what content is hosted there you might need. I believe in this case it would be more effective to see more data on the traffic itself to determine how it's going passed the content filters. 

I would also look at Blocking Portals because that will allow some content to bypass other filters. We had blocked external E-mail, but if you logged into Google from www.google.com you could then use the apps option and access it. Added Portals and it was inaccessible. It may be working along those lines I surmise. If it catch legit traffic you can then white list it.

Another option is AD Integration so you can crank up the restrictions based on User's. All dependant on your setup though.

[Van35T]

I tried to block the "Streaming Media" already using the content filtering, unfortunately it didn't help on some of the larger sites that I'm looking to block the video on. I did have to put a lot websites on whitelist though because we use them for training.

Good suggestion though!

[Van35T]

Thanks! I'll give that a shot!