Types of Policies

The types of policies are:

• Regular Policies - Policies that share common objects with other regular policies.

• Versioned Policies - A policy with a version number is displayed by clicking the button next to the regular policy name in the first column of Policies List Panel of the Policies List Page. Clicking the reverse arrow hides the versions of a policy. A policy with a version number contains a snapshot of the common objects that are embedded in the saved policy. The name of the policy contains a dot followed by an incremental number. The higher the number, the later the version. Versioned policies cannot be modified, but their rules can be extracted to a new policy.

• Currently Active Policy - This policy is extracted from the active policy. The currently active policy cannot be modified. If you click the currently active policy and highlight it, the edit button retains the (RO) designation to show that it is read only. A Save As button appears on the Policy Name line on the Packet Filtering tab of the Policy Rules panel. You can save any modifications to the currently active policy as a new policy. A Save As button appears on the Common Objects panel. You can save the common objects of this policy to replace the current common objects associates with regular policies. FIGURE 5-10 shows these Save As buttons.

Figure 5-10 Policy Rules Page Showing the Save As Buttons for the Currently Active Policy

This allows you to make the common objects embedded in this version of the policy the current common objects, overwriting the existing set of common objects.

This approach allows you to save only the rules part of the versioned policy so that:

• These rules become the current rules for this policy, for example the rules for policy Initial.10 can be made the rules for the current version of Initial.

• You can copy the rule to a new name.

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  Note -

  The rules created in this way are used with the current set of common objects. On verifying this policy, you may have to fix any inconsistencies.

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The difference in behavior between Save As and Edit(RO) is that Save As affects the current policy only and Edit(RO) affects a policy version. With Edit(RO), you have the additional choice of making the rules the current rules for the policy.