This is probably a long shot but I thought I'd give it a try. We have remote offices that are very remote -- as in satellite internet connections. Our vendor has bandwidth caps which if hit, cause a huge problem. We want employees to be able to use the internet when not working but we are trying to limit certain types of traffic.
Through our UTM firewall, we are able to block iCloud backups which helps. However, we cannot figure out a way to block the syncing of photos/videos via the photos app. If we block all traffic to iCloud, iMessage will not deliver photos.
Ideally, we want to block the iCloud backup and photo sync but still allow people to send individual photos/videos via iMessage.
We've done packet captures but most of the traffic is obviously encrypted. It appears that if we just block gateway.icloud.com, photo sync will stop but iMessage will work for text only messages. However, photos embedded in iMessages will not go.
Does anyone know if there is a way to isolate these different services through FQDN's, ports, etc...?
Thanks much. Hopefully someone has been through this before. Our firewall vendor cant do much as it appears we need to have a better understanding of how iMessage works.
-dave
