Has anyone else run into issues with Zscaler Internet Access's "safe search" enforcement being overly aggressive? We've rolled out ZIA across our engineering teams, and while most content filtering is working well, this specific feature is causing some headaches.
Our security policy mandates safe search enforcement on major search engines (Google, Bing, etc.). The problem is that it seems to be blocking or severely degrading some legitimate technical research queries. For example, when searching for error logs, specific CVE details, or even certain open-source project documentation that might share keywords with blocked categories, the results are either completely missing or heavily sanitized to the point of being useless.
Our current policy setup is straightforward:
```json
{
"url_categories": ["Search Engines"],
"policy_action": "ALLOW with Safe Search"
}
```
I'm trying to find a balance. The security requirement is non-negotiable, but developer productivity is taking a hit. Has anyone found a workaround, perhaps using:
* A more granular allow-list for certain subdomains (like `stackoverflow.com`)?
* Using different URL categories to separate general search from technical resource sites?
* Or is there a way to configure exceptions based on user groups? Our research teams shouldn't be blocked from accessing technical deep-dives.
Any insights or examples of how you've tuned this would be really helpful. I'm especially interested in whether creating a separate policy for our developer/research subnet with a different rule order could solve it without lowering our overall security posture.