Analyzing application usage

Web applications allow users to perform specific tasks or activities through web browsers such as Chrome or Internet Explorer. Examples include Yahoo! Mail and Chase Online Banking.

What is a web application category?

Web application categories are used to classify and group applications together based on shared characteristics.

How are web application categories classified?

The HPE OfficeConnect solution uses Webroot as a web content classification service. Webroot classifies the traffic into a large number of categories, to reduce the complexity of the feature in the HPE OfficeConnect solution. These large number of categories are grouped into one main category based on their classification.

Webroot offers the possibility to verify the category in which an URL belongs to by using the following link: https://www.brightcloud.com/tools/url-ip-lookup.php

What are the different types of application categories?

Below are the different application categories and the respective web content classification using Webroot:

Table 1: Application Categories and their Webroot Classification
Application Category	Icon	Webroot Classification
Recreational—Recreational applications include websites on personal activities and interests.		Travel Home and Garden Entertainment and Arts Local Information Hunting and Fishing Society Sports Music Fashion and Beauty Recreation and Hobbies Motor Vehicles Kids Online Greeting cards Religion
Enterprise—Enterprise applications include websites on professional and information services that are helpful for working environments.		Financial Services Business and Economy Individual Stock Advice and Tools Job Search Philosophy and Political Advocacy Educational Institutions Health and Medicine Legal Real Estate
Internet tools—Internet tool applications include tools and services for Internet navigation and usage.		Computer and Internet Security Computer and Internet Information Translation Reference and Research Personal Storage Search Engines Pay-to-Surf Internet Portals Internet Communications Web-based email Shareware and Freeware Dynamically Generated Content Training and Tools Web Hosting
Shopping—Shopping applications include websites for online shopping.		Auctions Shopping
Restricted Content—Restricted content applications include websites with sensitive information or graphic content.		Cult and Occult Sex Education Gambling Weapons Swimsuits & Intimate Apparel Alcohol and Tobacco Cheating Questionable
Adult Content—Adult content applications include websites with graphic adult content or illegal subjects.		Abused Drugs Marijuana Adult and Pornography Nudity Violence Abortion Hate and Racism Gross Illegal
Military & Government—Military and government applications include websites on military and government information and services.		Military Government
Social—Social applications include websites for social networking and media.		Social Networking Dating Personal sites and Blogs News and Media
Games & Streaming—Games and streaming applications include websites for online gaming and video streaming.		Streaming Media Games Web Advertisements Content Delivery Networks Image and Video Search
Local network—The Local network category includes the internal sites hosted locally in your private network.		Private IP Addresses
High Security Risk—High security risk applications include websites that contain known malicious Internet tools that can harm devices and damage the internal network.		Peer-to-Peer Hacking Keyloggers and Monitoring Malware Sites Phishing and Other Frauds Proxy Avoidance and Anonymizers Spyware and Adware Bot Nets Spam URLs
Uncategorized—Uncategorized applications include websites that cannot be grouped under any of the categories described in this list.		Unknown by Webroot
Do not consider these web categories	—	Dead Sites Parked Domains NOTE: The data of these categories is negligible, they will be ignored in the data transferred calculation and nothing will be displayed about them in OfficeConnect Portal.

What are the limitations of classifying web content using webroot?

Following are some of the limitations of the Webroot content classification service:

Webroot can only block traffic that is web based (HTTP).

Webroot cannot block secure web traffic (HTTPS). The main reason is because HTTPS traffic is encrypted, so the Webroot engine cannot analyze the traffic and block it.

Since HTTPS is mainly used in the mobile app industry, the traffic generated by mobile apps cannot be blocked by the HPE OfficeConnect Solution.