Advanced Network Protection Settings

Written By Cindy Johnson (Super Administrator)

Updated at February 16th, 2021

We'll walk you through adding allowed websites, configuring settings, and how to manage blocked websites so you can set Malicious URL Blocking up quickly and easily.

Allowed Websites 

Allowed Web Sites overrides the Malicious URL Blocking Settings, unblocking a website that is blocked by the Bad URL list. When you allow a website in, you can customize control over the content filtering and privacy settings.

To add an allowed website:

  1. Right-click on the desired policy and select Properties
  2. Find Advanced Network Protection then select Allowed Web Sites
  3. Click Add under the Allowed Web Sites box
  4. Enter the domain
    • Do not include http:// or www (e.g.; vipre.com)
  5. Optionally, select any of the Privacy Settings, which will override the global web filtering settings for the above domain
  6. Click Apply to accept changes


Blocked Websites 

When using VIPRE Endpoint Security Server, you can block specific websites from being accessed by the end-users. Here we'll show you how to manage that setting.

Add a Blocked Website

  1. Navigate to the Blocked Web Sites screen under Advanced Network Protection
  2. Click Add to add a new row
  3. In the text field, enter the domain that you want blocked
    • Do not include http:// or www.
    • Enabled is selected by default
  4. Click Apply to accept changes


Manage Blocked Websites 

  1. Navigate to the Blocked Web Sites screen under Advanced Network Protection
  2. Select the desired domain/URL; the following options are found under the Blocked Web Sites box
    • To block this domain/URL, select Enabled
    • To allow this domain/URL, unselect Enabled
    • Modify the spelling of the domain listed
    • Delete the domain by clicking Delete
  3. Click Apply to accept changes

Malicious URL Blocking 

Here we'll walk you through configuring Malicious URL Blocking as part of Advanced Network Protection in VIPRE Endpoint Security. Changes made under Add Allowed Web Sites will override anything configured here

To configure the Malicious URL Blocking settings:

  1. Right-click on the desired policy and select Properties
  2. Find Advanced Network Protection then select Malicious URL Blocking
  3. Under Verify HTTPS URLs (with browser extension), select the desired web browser
    • Currently, browser extensions for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox are supported
  4. Under Verify HTTPS URLs, in the box called Ports to filter for bad URLs, click Add and type in the TCP/UDP port that you want to block
    • This enables you to block web-traffic from specific ports only, from a Web site listed under the Bad URLs list
    • Ports 80 and 8080 are added by default and cannot be removed to ensure HTTP requests are filtered for bad URLs
  5. Configure Privacy Settings, which are based on the Bad URL list maintained by VIPRE Security
    • You can override these global settings for specific Web sites that you want to allow by adding allowed Web sites
      • Filter persistent cookies: a persistent cookie may be required to view certain Web sites; enabling this option may result in some pages not displaying properly
      • Filter session cookies: a session cookie may be required to view certain Web sites; enabling this option may result in some pages not displaying properly
      • Filter foreign cookies: a foreign cookie may be required to view certain advertisements or link to 3rd party sites; enabling this option may result in some content not displaying
      • Do not allow outside servers to trace web browsing: select to keep browsing private when redirected to other Web sites; when selected, the details of a link request are stripped from the referring Web site so that the target Web site cannot identify the page of which the page request originated from; unselect to allow this referring to occur
  6. Select Allow user to configure Malicious URL Blocking, to allow users to enable or disable URL blocking on the Agent machine
  7. Select Log when connections are blocked to log all attempted connections that are made to a blocked domain/URL on the Agent machine
    • You can view the log from the Agent Console (Firewall History > Web History)
  8. Click Apply at the bottom then OK.


Web Exploit Detection

To configure the Web Exploit Detection settings:

  1. In the Policy Properties, open Advanced Network Protection>Web Exploit Detection. 
  2. Enable Web Exploit Detection: 
  3. Settings: Select to block potential threats in web traffic. 
  4. Verify HTTP Payloads: HTTP payload scanning allows VIPRE to detect web-based threats before it's saved on the computer's storage or memory. 
  5. Verify HTTPS Payloads (with Browser Extension): HTTPS payload scanning allows VIPRE to detect web-based threats over secure web traffic via web browser extension before it's saved on the computer's storage or memory. 
  6. User Control: Select to allow agents to configure Web Exploit Detection. 
  7. Select Apply. 

DNS Protection

With DNS Protection, whenever any program on your computer needs to look up a hostname, VIPRE intercepts the request to make sure it's safe. Here we walk you through enabling this feature.

In VIPRE Endpoint Security:

  1. Locate and double-click the appropriate policy from the Site Navigator on the left side
    • A window called Policy Properties appears
  2. Find the section called Advanced Network Protection and, if necessary, click the clipboard_ecc0e74dea52289a9f03d7419db322067.png to expand the section
  3. Click on DNS Protection
  4. In the main window, click the checkbox next to Enable DNS Traffic Filtering
  5. Click Apply


DNS Protection has been enabled! Refer to Related Articles to learn more about DNS and how VIPRE DNS Protection works to keep you safe.