Anyone who has had the privilege of administrating a McAfee Web Gateway (WebWasher) will know that with consistent use of these devices, their configurations tend to become more and more detailed with white list entries that you have input because users will from time to time, not be able to either access or utilize web pages and their functions.  The deep packet inspection these devices do for web filtering is effective, however, not perfect.

As time goes on and you find yourself inputting more and more white list entries, the thought “What if this device failed,” isn’t a good one.  You would likely have to wait for all of your users to complain again if you don’t have a log of all the sites you’ve white listed.

So it is great practice to make sure you make a backup of your McAfee WebWasher’s configuration every time you make 2 or 3 changes to the devices configuration.  Here is how.

(This tutorial was created using a McAfee Web Gateway 6.8.7 build 7612 interface)

–  Log into the McAfee WW’s web interface.

–   Navigate to the Configuration tab > select the File Management menu option > then make sure the sub menu tab “Configuration Data” is selected.

–  From here you see the “Download Configuration Backup” button.  Both “Include User Database” and “Include Welcome Page data” check boxes should be checked.

–  Select the “Download Configuration Backup” button and choose where you would like to save the backup configuration script.  The backup script is saved with numbers indicating the date and the build of the interface but the standard is a bit hard to understand and so changing the backup name to more easily reflect the date of the backup is a good idea here.

–  That’s it!  You’re done!  In the event of cataclysmic failure you’ll be prepared.  Now just make sure you keep up with the backups periodically.