What is TLS Inspection?
The process of decrypting TLS-encrypted traffic at a proxy, inspecting the plaintext content for threats and policy violations, and re-encrypting it before forwarding to the destination.
TLS inspection (also called SSL inspection or break-and-inspect) is essential for any security architecture that relies on content inspection, because over 95% of web traffic is encrypted. Without TLS inspection, a SWG or DLP engine can only see the destination hostname via SNI; it cannot inspect file uploads, detect malware payloads, or identify sensitive data in the encrypted stream.
The inspection proxy terminates the TLS session from the client, decrypts the traffic, applies security policies (malware scanning, DLP, URL categorization on full URL paths), and then re-establishes a new TLS session to the destination. For this to work transparently, the proxy's root CA certificate must be trusted by all client endpoints, typically distributed via MDM or group policy.
The operational challenges are significant. Certificate-pinned applications (banking apps, certain SaaS connectors) will break if intercepted, requiring bypass rules. Privacy regulations in some jurisdictions restrict inspection of certain traffic categories (healthcare, financial). Performance overhead scales with the volume of encrypted traffic being decrypted and re-encrypted. And every bypass rule creates a blind spot. Maintaining an accurate, regularly audited bypass list is one of the most time-consuming ongoing tasks in a SASE deployment.
A cloud or on-premises proxy that inspects all web-bound traffic for malware, enforces URL filtering policies, and prevents data exfiltration over HTTP/HTTPS.
A set of technologies that detect and prevent unauthorized transmission of sensitive data by inspecting content at rest, in motion, and in use against predefined and custom data patterns.
The security half of SASE, delivering SWG, CASB, ZTNA, and DLP as cloud-delivered services without the SD-WAN networking component.
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