Many web-based applications are accessible through SSL (HTTPS), as well as through HTTP. Organizations offer encrypted SSL connections to provide more security to users. SSL encryption can also make applications more difficult for Application Control to detect. When you block applications that are accessible through SSL, you might also need to specifically block the SSL login for that application to make sure that you block all access to that application.
For example, when you select to block the application Google-Finance, this blocks Google’s financial applications. But it does not block Google Finance over SSL. To block that, you must also block the application Google Authentication via SSL. It is important to understand that, once you block Google Authentication over SSL, you lose control over the granularity of all Google SSL applications to block. For example, access to Google Docs and Gmail over SSL is also blocked.
Similar behavior occurs for some Microsoft and Yahoo applications when they are accessed over SSL. There are corresponding signatures for Authentication over SSL for Microsoft and Yahoo and many other applications in the Application Control application list. To granularly manage these types of applications, you might want to block Authentication over SSL. Then you can use the application signatures to granularly configure the applications that can be used over the http access that is allowed.