PAN-OS software provides options to exclude specific websites from URL category enforcement and those websites are blocked or allowed (depending on your rules) regardless of their associated URL category. This is done by creating a custom URL category list or by using an external dynamic list (EDL) in a URL Filtering profile. When the entries in these lists have a hostname pattern that does not end with a forward slash (/) or a hostname pattern that ends with an asterisk (*), any URL that starts with the specified pattern is considered a match. Entries with a caret (^) at the end of a hostname pattern match any top level domain. This may inadvertently allow or block more URLs than intended and allowing more URLs than intended represents a security risk. For example: example.com will match example.com.website.test example.com.* will match example.com.website.test example.com.^ will match example.com.test You should take special care when using such entries in policy rules that allow tr…