How to allow specific youtube video categories?

[Danilo_Lara]

Hi,

Does anyone know if is it possible to allow youtube videos by categories, for example allow only videos from education categorie. As youtube categorize their videos, there are some solutions, like Mcafee web gateway, that has the ability to allow specific video categories and block the all the rest.

Regards,

[Jason_Dance]

Not sure if its possible to go that deep.  Here are a couple of places to look to see what is supported though:

https://appwiki.checkpoint.com/appwikisdb/applications.htm?view=se&app=inclient&prod=27&date=1&oem=7...  (This is for app control. You will be able to search for youtube here)

https://www.checkpoint.com/urlcat/appcontrol.htm (The categories available. I sometimes find its not up to date though so your mileage may vary)

https://www.checkpoint.com/urlcat/main.htm (Check the category of a website).

[PhoneBoy]

To use the “education only” type filter you have to rewrite the URLs to tell YouTube to only serve educational videos.

Check Point currently does not offer this feature, but I believe it is being looked at for a later release.

[Hugo_vd_Kooij]

Keep in mind you need to setup an API key with Google and the amount of requests may be either capped or you need to pay to get more.

That is a dependecy that might  cause trouble.

I have used something like this with Blue Coat proxies for a few years but never in a big network. The smaller ones manage to stay below the cap you have on free requests.

[Danilo_Lara]

Hi Hugo,

Have you already used this with Check Point? If I could call the Youtube API to check what categorie the video user is trying to access belongs to I can adjust my policy accordingly. 

I didn't realize a way to setup such policy.

Thanks!

[Hugo_vd_Kooij]

Blue Coat have this build in and that is something Check point should do as well. It would just ask you for your API key:

Then I get the option to use the categgories from YouTube. But to be honest. That is ..... mostly a rough estimate and Google is not very strict or very fast in the fixing wrong categorization. issue in my experience.

I suggest you file a Feature Request for this option. And I expect that Check Point wants to know what is in it for them in term of sales. Deal breaking features are considered differently from Nice-To-Have ones.

[Danilo_Lara]

Exactly this, Hugo.

I'll submit an RFE.

Thanks!

[PhoneBoy]

Just to update on this, it appears we offer this sort of "Header Injection" in R80.20.

It is currently NOT documented publicly and not something you're likely to stumble across in the GUI.

Trying to resolve this--stay tuned.

[Christopher_War]

You know I am very interested in this!   We really need this capability, hopefully this header injector will do the trick.  This feature combined with Maestro would be a gamechanger in K12.

[Danilo_Lara]

Great to know!

Thanks phone boy!

[govinda]

Hi PhoneBoy,

Could you please share any document or SK if it is possible in R80.30?

Thanks in advance

Govinda

[PhoneBoy · Accepted solution]

The SK that describes how to do this: Application Parameters / Tenant Restrictions for Office365 

Despite the name, this applies for:

• Office365 Tenant Restrictions
• G-Suite Allowed Domains
• YouTube for Education

This can be applied in R80.10 with a specific hotfix or R80.20 and above.

Presumably other forms of "header injection" can be done on other applications as well, but this is what's documented in the SK.

[Christopher_War]

Do you have any idea how happy you just made me!!!  I hope everyone realizes what this feature combined with Maestro means for us in the K12 space!  It's on!