Application Layer Policies

The Cisco ASA Application Inspection and Control (AIC) features provide advanced application layer (OSI Layers 5 to 7) filtering that provides a more granular level of control for modern-day applications.

This advanced inspection helps to prevent malicious content from being delivered to endpoints protected by the ASA that would normally bypass traditional Layers 3 and 4 ACLs. AIC inspection can be performed against protocols such as HTTP, FTP, DNS, ESMTP, and other common application protocols.

The following features are provided by AIC on the Cisco ASA:

• Protocol minimization: Enables a minimal required set of protocol features through the ASA

• Payload minimization: Enables transport of minimally required payloads over the application session