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Ali7h
Ali7h
Visitor III
June 7, 2026
Question

web filter doing Antivirus scanning

  • June 7, 2026
  • 3 replies
  • 50 views

Hello,
According to the FortiGate Administration Guide,  https://docs.fortinet.com/document/fortigate/8.0.0/administration-guide/155426

web filters are applied in this order:

  1. URL filter
  2. FortiGuard Web Filtering
  3. Web content filter
  4. Web script filter
  5. Antivirus scanning

I'm confused about the last step. Antivirus is a separate security profile, not a web filtering feature. Why is it included in the web filtering order? Is this order only relevant when both Web Filter and Antivirus profiles are applied to the same policy?
also i see  that:
…...

The FortiGate’s WAD daemon sends the URLs to FortiGuard in real-time for category determination.
is that the webfilter process by wad even if it in flow or proxy mode?

 
 

 

 

3 replies

Jean-Philippe_P
Staff & Editor
Jean-Philippe_P
Staff & Editor
June 12, 2026

Hello Ali7h, 

 

Thank you for using the Community Forum. I will seek to get you an answer or help. We will reply to this thread with an update as soon as possible. 

 

Regards,

Jean-Philippe - Fortinet Community Team
funkylicious
SuperUser
funkylicious
SuperUser
June 12, 2026

 

"jack of all trades, master of none"
    sjoshi
    Staff
    sjoshi
    Staff
    June 12, 2026

    Hi ​@Ali7h 

    Antivirus inspection is integrated into the HTTP inspection chain so that once a website passes Web Filter checks (URL filtering, FortiGuard rating, content/script inspection), the resulting HTTP objects such as images, scripts, or downloads can be scanned for malware. This integration occurs only when both Web Filter and Antivirus profiles are applied to the same firewall policy. If a policy has only Web Filtering enabled, FortiGate still displays antivirus as a conceptual last step, but the AV stage is bypassed in practice.
    In proxy‐based inspection mode, the WAD manages the full HTTP session but in flow mode it is taken care by ips engine.

    Thanks, Salon
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