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38 Data Center & Hybrid Cloud Security For Dummies, Palo Alto Networks Special Edition These materials are © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. Content identification Content identification infuses next-generation firewalls with capabilities previously unheard of in enterprise firewalls, including: » Threat prevention: This component prevents malware and exploits from penetrating the network, regardless of the application traffic in which they are hiding. • Application decoder: Pre-processes data streams and inspects for specific threat identifiers. • Stream-based malware scanning: Scanning traffic as soon as the first packets of a file are received — as opposed to waiting until the entire file is in memory — maximizes throughput and minimizes latency. • Uniform threat signature format: Performance is enhanced by avoiding the need to use separate scanning engines for each type of threat. Viruses, command-and-control (C2) communications, and vulnerability exploits can all be detected in a single pass. • Vulnerability attack protection: Similar to the functionality provided in intrusion prevention systems (IPS), protocol anomaly, behavior anomaly, and heuristic detection mechanisms are used for protection from known and unknown threats. • Cloud-based intelligence: For content that's unknown, the ability to send to a cloud-based security service ("sand- boxing") for rapid analysis and a "verdict" that the firewall can then use. » Uniform Resource Locator (URL) filtering: URL filtering is a tool used to classify content. An integrated URL database allows administrators to monitor and control web surfing activities of employees and guest users. Employed in conjunc- tion with user identification, web usage policies can even be set on a per-user basis, further safeguarding the enterprise from an array of legal, regulatory, and productivity-related risks. » File and data filtering: Taking advantage of in-depth application inspection, file and data filtering enables enforcement of policies that reduce the risk of unauthorized information transfer, or malware propagation. Capabilities