Patent ID: 7966654

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for processing application-level content of network service protocols, the method comprising: receiving an incoming network connection, at a networking subsystem of a firewall device, the incoming connection being characterized by a source network address, a destination network address and a network service protocol; determining, by the networking subsystem, the network service protocol of the incoming network connection; determining, by the networking subsystem, whether to allow or deny the incoming connection by identifying a matching firewall policy based on the source network address, the destination network address and the network service protocol and applying packet-layer firewall rules associated with the matching firewall policy; if the incoming connection is allowed, then: redirecting the incoming network connection, by the networking subsystem, to a proxy module of one or more proxy modules within the firewall device that is configured to support the network service protocol; retrieving, by the proxy module, one or more content processing configuration schemes associated with the matching firewall policy, the one or more content processing configuration schemes each including a plurality of content processing configuration settings for each of one or more network service protocols; and processing, by the proxy module, application-level content of a packet stream associated with the incoming network connection by reconstructing the application-level content, including extracting and buffering content from a plurality of packets of the packet stream; and scanning the application-level content based on the retrieved one or more content processing configuration schemes.