Patent ID: 9729508
Date: 2017-08-08
CPC Classifications: H04L

Claim:
1. A computer-implemented method comprising: maintaining, by a firewall device within a user space of the firewall device, a plurality of configuration schemes, wherein each of the plurality of configuration schemes comprises a listing of a plurality of network service protocols, and wherein each of the plurality of configuration schemes defines, for each particular network service protocol in the plurality of network service protocols, a set of administrator-configurable application-level content filtering process settings that indicates one or more particular application-level content filtering processes to perform; maintaining, by the firewall device within a kernel of the firewall device, a security policy database including information defining a plurality of firewall security policies, wherein the information defining the plurality of firewall security policies includes, for each one of the plurality of firewall security policies, information identifying an associated one of the plurality of configuration schemes and an action to take with respect to a particular network session based on one or more of a set of one or more source Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, a set of one or more destination IP addresses and a network service protocol; and performing, by the firewall device, policy-based application-level content filtering of a plurality of network sessions by, for each network session of the plurality of network sessions: