Historically, each URL has been mapped to a single category. While this one-to-one mapping is simple, it creates two long-term problems for policy management:

The first limitation of single-category mapping is that introducing a new category can break existing policies that rely on the original classification.
The second limitation is that adding increasingly granular categories risks bloating the category list, making acceptable-use policies harder to implement, review, and maintain over time.

To address both limitations of traditional URL categorisation, the NBRS-8 platform is introducing URL Multi-Categorisation and App Identification as part of the January 2026 Patch Tuesday release. Release Information

URL Multi-Categorisation is implemented through the introduction of secondary categorisation.

Under this secondary categorisation model, a URL can now be assigned one primary category along with multiple secondary categories. When a policy rule evaluates a specific category, the rule will match if any of the URL’s assigned categories satisfy that condition.

This multi-category evaluation behavior allows new categories to be introduced and deployed without breaking existing policy configurations. Existing rules continue to function as expected, while administrators gain the flexibility to expand categorisation coverage over time.

This updated categorisation model also enables more accurate identification of modern, distributed services. OpenAI services, for example, use more than a dozen domains across their APIs, which makes traditional single-category mapping impractical.

The combination of URL Multi-Categorisation and App Identification allows the NBRS-8 platform to reliably identify applications such as CHATGPT even when traffic spans multiple domains and services.

All categorisation updates continue to be delivered using minimal-bandwidth incremental database updates via the platform’s patented PUSH technology.