NSE4 Security Profiles Practice Question
A company wants to block all HTTP traffic but allow HTTPS. Which SSL inspection method should be used on the firewall policy?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to assume HTTPS traffic must be inspected to be allowed, but the firewall can permit or deny based on the destination port without any SSL inspection at all.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
No inspection
To block HTTP (port 80) while allowing HTTPS (port 443), no SSL inspection is needed because the firewall can distinguish traffic by port number alone. SSL inspection is only required when you need to examine the encrypted payload of HTTPS traffic, not to permit or deny it based on the protocol. Therefore, 'No inspection' is correct for this access control requirement.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
No inspection
Why this is correct
Applying no SSL inspection to the policy means the FortiGate does not decrypt or examine HTTPS traffic; it simply passes it through based on the destination port (443). This is the appropriate and efficient choice when the requirement is to block HTTP (port 80) while allowing HTTPS, because the firewall can enforce that distinction entirely through policy rules without the overhead or privacy implications of encryption decryption.
- ✗
Deep inspection
Why it's wrong here
Deep inspection is FortiGate's full SSL inspection method, which places the firewall inline as a proxy, decrypting all HTTPS traffic, scanning the plaintext with IPS, antivirus, and web filtering, then re-encrypting it. This is unnecessary for merely blocking HTTP and allowing HTTPS, and it adds significant processing latency, requires clients to trust the FortiGate certificate authority, and can break applications that use certificate pinning or mutual TLS authentication.
- ✗
Full SSL inspection
Why it's wrong here
Full SSL inspection, also known as man-in-the-middle decryption, forces the firewall to terminate the TLS connection from the client and create a new one with the server, allowing it to read and filter all encrypted content. For this scenario, that level of inspection is overkill and poses risks such as data privacy concerns and the need to distribute and trust a custom CA on all endpoints, while adding no benefit for the straightforward port-based HTTP/HTTPS access control.
- ✗
Certificate inspection
Why it's wrong here
Certificate inspection, a lighter SSL inspection mode, intercepts the TLS handshake just enough to capture and validate the server certificate, extracting fields like SNI and issuer, but it does not decrypt the application data. This mode is not needed when the goal is simply to differentiate HTTP from HTTPS, because the firewall can allow or deny based on port alone; certificate inspection introduces extra handshake processing and may fail for TLS 1.3 handshakes that encrypt the certificate, causing false negatives.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This NSE4 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Fortinet certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the NSE4 exam.