When enabled, applied MAC-based policies are cleared on an interface when the associated MAC address is aged-out and removed from the FDB. When disabled, applied MAC-based policies are not cleared on an interface when the associated MAC address is aged-out and removed from the FDB. The policy is only cleared based on other PBA-impacting events, such as link-down, PBA disable, PBA interface disable and policy deletion/disable. This MAC-based policy lockdown is useful when connecting devices that may generate minimal traffic for extended periods causing installed PBA policies to be cleared when they are still necessary.