What is the difference between using Monocle to monitor vs. enforce traffic decisions?
Monitor is passive: Monocle provides visibility into how users connect to your application without impacting users or taking any blocking action. Enforce applies actions such as blocking or allowing traffic based on Monocle's assessments. Most users start with a monitoring phase before configuring and enabling enforcement.
Similar questions
What is the difference between Raw Assessment and Policy API?
With Raw Assessment, you decrypt and evaluate traffic yourself for full control. With the Policy API, Monocle evaluates traffic and returns a decision directly, which is simpler to implement.
Where does enforcement actually happen?
In most setups, enforcement happens in your own infrastructure, such as backend logic, API gateways, or middleware. For Cloudflare integrations, enforcement can happen at the edge and is directly configurable via the Monocle UI.
Which policy strategy should I use?
Allow All applies no blocking rules. Normal is recommended for most use cases. Aggressive blocks all anonymized traffic and carries a higher risk of false positives. Custom (Pro) gives access to all standard options plus more granular assessment attribute-level configuration.
Can I block specific services or countries?
Yes. With a Team plan, you can block or allow specific services, such as VPN providers, and block or allow specific countries using country codes.
Can we decrypt Monocle assessments ourselves instead of calling an API?
Yes — this is already supported at no extra cost. Every Monocle application has both a Secret Key (for the hosted Decryption API) and a Private Key (for manual backend decryption) available in the Monocle Dashboard. Backend decryption lets your own server decrypt the Monocle Assessment locally using the Private Key, without making a call to Spur's Decryption API.
Related guides & explainers
Expanding IP and Service Rows in the Explorer
Click any IP or service row in the Monocle Explorer's breakdown tables to expand an inline detail panel, without leaving the table.
Understanding Monocle Application Health Status
Each Monocle application shows a health status badge indicating whether it's actively sending traffic. Learn what each color means and what to check if an application goes quiet.
Fastly No-Code Integration
Connect Monocle to your Fastly service without writing any code. Monocle deploys and manages a Compute service that enforces your policy at the edge.
Context API Chrome Extension
Install Spur's Context API Chrome Extension to look up IP enrichment data directly from any web page — highlight an IP and get results inline, without leaving your browser. This is a developer-mode tool, not a Chrome Web Store listing.