Note
The following features are currently in Controlled GA:
- The ability to add a description to custom categories.
- The View Pending Changes window, which allows you to compare pending changes for a custom category to its original state, including changes to URL lists.
- The ability to clone a custom category.
- The ability to revert changes to a custom category.
- Access to the Custom Categories REST API v2.
For customers with existing custom categories, a full migration to the new API and updated UI is planned for R132. Until this release, the Custom Categories REST API and additional UI features will be unavailable for existing tenants. To enable these features for new tenants, contact Netskope Support or your sales representative.
You can create custom categories to override the predefined Netskope URL category mapping for given URLs. You can create a custom category for a URL that’s uncategorized, i.e., Netskope doesn’t have a category mapping for the URL or the Netskope predefined category doesn’t fit with a desired policy configuration.
For example, say you require a policy that all blocks sanctioned apps or domains for online communication except Slack. However, Slack also belongs to the predefined category “Chat, IM, and other communication”. To configure this policy and exclude Slack from it, you can create a custom category for Slack.
When creating a custom category, you can select a combination of predefined categories and URL lists (inclusions and exclusions). Netskope treats custom categories as a separate category to the predefined ones, and you must add it to an existing policy or create a new one to enforce it.
Creating a Custom Category
To create a custom category:
- Go to Policies > Profiles > Custom Categories.
- Click New Category. The New Custom Category wizard appears.
- Enter a name for the custom category.
- (Optional) Enter a description for the custom category. Special and UTF-8 characters are supported.
- Under Definition, you can configure both predefined categories and URL lists for the custom category. Any incoming URLs will be matched against the chosen categories or URL lists.
- For Category, search for and select the predefined categories to include in this custom category.
- For URL List, search for and select the URL lists to include in this custom category.
- (Optional) Under AND NOT, search for and select the URL lists to exclude from this custom category.
- Click Save.
- Apply the changes.
Once you save the custom category, you can Edit, Clone, or Delete the category. For a category in a pending state (i.e., changes haven’t been applied yet), you can click Revert to restore the category to its previous state.
Your custom categories will be available in the Categories dropdown when creating a Real-time Protection policy.
Custom Categories API
A Netskope REST API is available for custom categories. The Custom Categories API allows you to manage your custom categories.
More information about this REST API is available in Swagger. In the UI, navigate to Settings > Tools > REST API v2 and click API Documentation to access the Swagger API documentation. To learn more about REST APIs, see REST API v2 Overview.