Configure Geographic Controls

Geographic Controls allow administrators to restrict web access based on destination country. Using this feature, you can block or allow traffic to specific countries at the account level, and apply these restrictions across selected policies. This granular control helps organizations enforce regional compliance and data residency requirements.

1. Navigate to Web > Geographical Controls.
2. Select countries to block:
   1. Select one or more countries from the Available countries list on the left.
   2. Use the > arrow to move selected countries to the Blocked countries column on the right as shown in the screenshot below:
      
      
   3. To remove countries from the blocked list, select them in the right column and use the < arrow to move them back.
3. You can toggle off Block based on country code top-level domain to remove domain-level filtering in addition to IP-based geographic blocking.

   Example: If you block India, Israel, and the Russian Federation:

   • Without this toggle: Only sites with IP addresses located in these countries are blocked.
   • With this toggle enabled: Sites with .in, .il, or .ru domain extensions are also blocked, regardless of where they are hosted. This prevents users from accessing content associated with these countries even if the hosting server is located elsewhere.
     Note: The toggle is enabled by default
4. Add hostname exceptions to exclude specific sites from geographic blocks:
   1. Enter a hostname (e.g., yahoo.com) in the Add Hostname field and click Add.
   2. Excepted hostnames are always permitted, even if their destination country or domain extension is blocked.
      
      

   Use case: You block Russia and enable TLD blocking, but need to allow access to a critical vendor site (vendor.ru). Add vendor.ru as a hostname exception to permit access while keeping other Russian sites blocked.

5. Under Policy scope, select which policies this geographic control block applies to:
   1. Select one or more policies from the Available policies list on the left.
   2. Use the > arrow to move them to the Selected policies column on the right.
   3. Toggle on Apply to future policies to automatically apply this geographic control block to newly created policies.
6. Click Save to apply the geographic controls.