Are you an administrator or security analyst who watches over a firewall with a hundred or more rules? Or perhaps a hired gun who must review a firewall with years of crusty buildup? Are you creating a test lab that involves a wide variety of networks, servers, and risks? If you're interested in enterprise-level firewalls, this article will help you make sense of common failures in processes and tools. We'll focus on enterprise-grade business and networking issues that affect firewalls. (Penetration studies and piercing firewalls from the outside will be covered in a later article.)

Various brands of firewalls implement the same principles in different ways. The most difficult task is not learning a particular brand of firewall's specific operations; it's setting up the firewall securely and then maintaining it securely.

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