PAC file

A proxy auto-configuration (PAC) file defines how web browsers choose an appropriate proxy for fetching a given URL. The Forcepoint Web Security Cloud PAC file contains a number of global settings and includes any exclusions you add (for example, intranet sites) that should not use the cloud proxy.

All supported browsers have the ability to use PAC files. PAC files can be configured manually, or delivered via Windows GPO, or similar.

When configuring browsers to download the PAC file, you can specify either the standard PAC file URL or a policy-specific PAC file URL.

Standard PAC file URL: if a user’s browser requests the standard PAC file URL from a known IP address associated with a policy, the user will be served the policy-specific PAC file. If the standard PAC file is requested from an unknown IP (for example, roaming users), a global PAC file will be delivered.
Example standard PAC file URL (HTTPS):
```
https://pac.webdefence.global.blackspider.com:8087/proxy.pac
```
Policy-specific PAC file URL: if a user’s browser requests a policy-specific PAC file URL, then this policy-specific PAC file will always be served. This can be used to ensure that users always receive their policy-specific PAC file, even when connecting from unknown IP addresses, such as roaming users.
Example policy-specific PAC file URL (HTTPS):
```
https://pac.webdefence.global.blackspider.com:8087/proxy.pac?p=xxxxxx
```
(Where xxxxxx is a unique policy identifier.)

For more information on PAC files, see Proxy auto-configuration (PAC) in the Web Security Cloud help.