Tuesday, 14 July 2015

Access Denied (policy_denied). Your system policy has denied access to the requested URL. For assistance, contact your network support team.

While browsing the internet, you may encounter the message: "Access Denied (policy_denied).  Your system policy has denied access to the requested URL.  For assistance, contact your network support team."  

This message indicates the internet traffic is being filtered.  The most common source of an internet traffic filter is in corporate environments that use a proxy server or a firewall appliance designed to filter web traffic.  Some businesses are configured as satellite locations using a VPN tunnel.  In these configurations, the VPN may be configured to filter internet traffic.  In rare instances, the Internet Service Provider is filtering internet traffic.  Typically though, your IT Department or a Network Management Team has configured your internet traffic to be filtered. 

Isolating Source of Web Filtering

In an environment that is unmanaged and the source of the filtering is unknown, following are some steps you may wish to peform:

The source of this issue may be a Proxy Server Setting in your web browser or it may be the Gateway IP Address on the computer.  The gateway may be a Proxy Server or Firewall Appliance or VPN Router. 

First, I would recommend checking the Proxy Server Settings in your web browser.

Second, I would recommend browsing to the Gateway IP Address.

Third, you may want to review software installed on the local computer such as antivirus or web filtering software.