Allow access to your own Google Sites whilst blocking all others

Problem

You would like to ensure that users can access approved Google Sites websites, whilst ensuring all others are blocked.

Google Sites is commonly used to host time wasting material such as online games, and many administrators choose to block the entire 'sites.google.com' subdomain to prevent access to this content. This article will take you through the necessary steps to ensure that approved Google Sites pages can be accessed whilst preventing users from accessing all other Google Sites.

Solution

Note
This solution requires a Decrypt and Inspect policy being place that covers the 'sites.google.com' subdomain. For more information see: HTTPS Inspection Policy.

  1. Navigate to 'Guardian > Policy objects > Categories > Manage categories'

  2. Create a custom category named "sites.google.com allowed' and under the 'Domain/URL filtering' section add the Google Sites you'd like to allow access to. 

    For more modern Google Sites this URL will be "sites.google.com/view/<site_name>"
    For Classic Google Sites the URL will be "sites.google.com/site/<site_name>"
  3. Create a second custom category named "sites.google.com blocked" and under the 'Domain/URL filtering' section add the following URLs:

    sites.google.com/view/
    sites.google.com/site/

  4. Navigate to 'Guardian > Web filter > Policy wizard' and create the following policy as below:

    Who: Everyone *
    What: Sites.google Allowed
    Where: Everywhere *
    When: Always *
    Action: Allow

    * - Change as appropriate
  5. Create a second web filter policy as below:

    Who: Everyone *
    What: Sites.google Blocked
    Where: Everywhere *
    When: Always *
    Action: Block

    * - Change as appropriate
  6. Finally, ensure that these policies are ordered correctly in your web filter policy table (Guardian > Web filter > Manage policies). The allow policy must be placed above the block policy, as per the screenshot below:

    mceclip3.png