Re: Firewall recommendations?

[Myroslav Halecky <mhalecky () optonline net>]

I have had the ability to work with several different firewalls. Some earlier
model like the V-one, and the ANS firewall and more recently the cyberguard,
checkpoint and PIX. I think that the recent ones are all good commercial
firewalls but each one requires a different level of configuration skills. The
cyberguard comes as an appliance, and you can say so does the PIX. The
checkpoint can be had as an appliance or you might want to install and configure
it yourself on an microsoft or unix server. I think that even if you are skilled
its much easier to go with an appliance type firewall.

You also might want to check out the level of customer support you get, and how
much you want to pay for it.

Then you should consider your network requirementand your business requirements
which might dictate how you need to secure your network. For example will you
need a DMZ for your web servers? Will external vendors require access to your
internal network, ie: your VPN requirements. Will you be responsible for the
firewall configuration, network configuration and design. Will you require a lot
of NAT? Remeber the more NAT you use the more complex network diagnostics
become. And you might have to run diagnostics on the firewall.

I like the cyberguard. It comes as an appliance, it has many proxies for your
major network services, it does stateful packet inspection, and it is easy to
configure via the GUI interface, or through the command line, if thats what you
require, perhaps for remote trouble shooting and configuration. It has many
logging capabilites.

The PIX on the other hand is also fairly easy to configure, although I think
that the configuration is not as easy to understand.

The checkpoint has a central configuration station, where you manage the
firewall policies. It is also well known for its VPN support.

rgds
Myro



Tom Sevy wrote:

> Pix's Nat capabilities (or lack thereof) are a major PIA when you have
> worked with the flexible NAT capabilities of CP. Major Major PIA...
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Ellis [mailto:dellis () unicam com]
> Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 9:05 PM
> To: 'Thorsten Dampf -- 7stein.net'; 'rdusek () myway com';
> 'security-basics () securityfocus com'
> Subject: RE: Firewall recommendations?
>
> Hi at my current job we use checkpoint, and I personally love that firewall
> product. I am not a big fan of the pix and I have never played with the ISA
> server cause it is a microsoft product and would not trust it. We are very
> security conscious company. I think checkpoint has the best interface
> around. But hey that's my personal opinion. The cisco pix is not a true
> stateful packet inspection firewall. I have a classified pdf that talk about
> the pix versus checkpoint in a situation with multiple exchange servers and
> the ports you had to allow open for the pix to work in the environment that
> was documented was totally unsafe.
> At my next job, I would suggest going with checkpoint. Its not that
> expensive when you start thinking about isa server cause You still need the
> hardware, the windows server OS license and then the ISA license.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thorsten Dampf -- 7stein.net [mailto:thorsten.dampf () 7stein net]
> Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 3:48 PM
> To: rdusek () myway com; security-basics () securityfocus com
> Subject: AW: Firewall recommendations?
>
> Take a look at the watchguard products. www.watchguard.com
> Regards, Thorsten
>
> > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> > Von: rdusek () myway com [mailto:rdusek () myway com]
> > Gesendet: Donnerstag, 6. März 2003 21:05
> > An: security-basics () securityfocus com
> > Betreff: Firewall recommendations?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > I am in charge of researching a firewall to replace what we currently
> >
> > have. At my previous job I had used Microsoft ISA in a low-security
> >
> > environment, and was happy with its features, and its
> > integration with
> >
> > the Windows environment there. However, at my current job,
> > security is a
> >
> > much greater concern, and I have to admit, I am somewhat
> > uneasy running a
> >
> > Microsoft firewall product on top of a Microsoft OS. We also had
> >
> > investigated Checkpoint as well as Cisco Pix, and found that for our
> >
> > needs, the Pix at least seemed to need _many_ separate
> > components for the
> >
> > same functionality. My question is what are your experiences
> > with using
> >
> > ISA from a security standpoint? Usability issues? From the
> > Mac end? Or
> >
> > would we be better off pursuing the Checkpoint or the Pix
> > solution? We
> >
> > also plan on implementing VPN over whatever we choose, so if you
> >
> > recommend something other than these, it should support at
> > least PPTP and
> >
> > perhaps eventually IPSec/L2TP. We have also considered placing ISA
> >
> > behind a Linux (or BSD) IP Chains firewall and our perimeter
> > network to
> >
> > block some of the traffic from getting to ISA. Any comments
> > here? Thanks
> >
> > to everybody in advance!
>
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