IMPORTANCE OF FIREWALL AUDITING IN ANY ORGANIZATION!
There is a basic need of any company to protect its information or Data from the unauthorized persons. For this purpose companies used many types of security methods like CCTVs, security guards, digital doors which will not work without authorized access only and many more.
These security methods could be used for physical security only. But now a day every company or at least IT companies store their data in digital form. That’s why there is need of digital security too. Technology is on its boom and any hacker can steal all the confidential data of any company using just a laptop by lying on bed at his home. It seems to be funny but it is true.
Every coin has two sides. Therefore if we talk about internet it also has two sides. It could be a friend of anyone on other hand a enemy as well. In companies when users use their services then they send data to their servers. This data could be malicious. Both in and out data flows could be malicious. Therefore monitoring of that data is very important. This type of security is not possible with the help of CCTVs, Security Guards etc. There are many tools available in the market for this purposes and one of them is called “Firewall”. There is a need of many softwares and products to keep the data secure but Firewall keeps the eye on the “Internet Traffic mainly.
To protect organization’s network from malicious traffic, deployment of firewall was necessary. To detect malicious payload firewall use signature-pattern and to detect unauthorized traffic it uses rule-pattern. When malicious payload pattern keep on evolving, signatures have to be kept updated. Number of rules will be changed in a given firewall but it is not possible to change the rule pattern. It is important to manage and define rules of firewall properly because a single mistake in rule management may put the whole network of any company at risk. The cybercriminals and hackers are always looking for these types of mistakes done by the firewall rule management. Hackers only required an entry point. Once they enter in the network what they can do nobody can imagine that.
“Security is a process, it’s not a product.” If anyone thinks buying any product and install that product on system can gave him security then it is the biggest misunderstanding. It is a long life process. Updating the product, fixing the bugs, auditing of system which is using the product and policies declaration is the part of this process. For example when we install any firewall following things are to be taken care of:
1. Underneath of Operating System
2. Configuration of server
3. Network to be protected
4. Creating Rule sets
Here creating Rule Sets is last but not least. Just installation of firewall on system is not a solution in actual it is a naïve. This assumption is like a false sense of security and we know very well having false sense of security is more risky than having no security.
The server and Operating System would need patching at proper times after the installation of firewall but there is need to look after the rule sets more as compare to other things because rule count is going to increase from day one of the installation. A single mistake in the management of rule sets may lead the complete network to the risk. And hackers will never lose these types of opportunities. Any rule set in firewall is consist of these components destination, source, action (deny/permit) and action.
Source: sectivenet.com
