Hey everyone, hope you're having a productive week. I've been deep in the weeds on a project that's less about marketing automation and more about securing it, which led me down a Cisco Umbrella path. I think my scenario might be a common one for those of us managing segmented teams.
We have a specific department—let's call them the "Creative Ops" team—that needs broad web access for tools like Figma, Behance, various stock photo sites, and niche design forums. However, we've identified a need to lock down *their* outbound traffic to certain high-risk categories and, more importantly, a handful of very specific non-standard SaaS tools and personal storage sites that our broader corporate policy doesn't cover. The goal is to let the rest of the company operate under our standard security policies while applying an extra, stricter layer *just* for this one group.
I've been piecing together a workflow in the Umbrella dashboard, and I'd love to share my steps and get your feedback or alternative approaches. Here's my practical, step-by-step plan:
* **First, Identity Isolation:** I started by ensuring this department's devices are in their own unique Active Directory group. In our case, we sync this via Umbrella's AD integration. This is the cornerstone—policies are applied to identities, not just IPs.
* **Second, Policy Inheritance Structure:** I created a new policy specifically for "Creative Ops." I set the "Default" policy (which everyone gets) to block our standard company-wide categories (malware, phishing, adult content, etc.). Then, I made the Creative Ops policy a **child** of the Default policy. This means they inherit all those base blocks automatically.
* **Third, Adding Department-Specific Blocks:** Within the Creative Ops policy, I added two key layers:
1. **Destination Lists:** This is where the magic happens for *specific* sites. I created a new "Blocked Creative Tools" destination list. Here, I added the exact domains and URLs for those non-approved personal storage and shadow IT SaaS tools we want to block *for them only*. I then added this Destination List as a **Block** rule within their policy.
2. **Content Categories:** I also went into the "Web Policy" settings for their specific policy and added blocks on additional content categories that might be riskier for their workflow but are okay for, say, the engineering team (like "Anonymizers" or "High Risk" categories).
* **Fourth, Testing & Order of Operations:** The order of rules matters. Umbrella processes from top to bottom within a policy. I made sure my specific Destination List block rule is placed **above** any broader category-based allows. We're now in a pilot phase, testing with a few devices in that AD group to ensure we didn't break their legitimate design tools.
My main question for the community is around scalability and nuance. Have any of you found a cleaner way to do this, especially if you have *multiple* departments needing unique blocks? Also, how do you handle the scenario where a site on their block list might be needed temporarily? Do you use the policy-specific allow lists, or do you have a different swivel-chair process?
Would really appreciate any insights or pitfalls you've encountered with similar granular control setups. The documentation is good, but real-world workflow stories are always better!
- Al
Automate the boring stuff.