A firewall is a barrier or a security wall between your network and the Internet to protect and prevent from intrusion or malicious attackers. A firewall is normally placed at the network gateway server that helps to analyze incoming and outgoing traffic between its network and the internet.
The most common types of firewall been used nowadays are called the Packet-Filter, Application-Level Gateways and Circuit-Level Gateways. It has the ability to control the flow of traffic on network that travels in and out between a private network and public network, such as block or restrict from a specific IP address or users by configuring the firewall rules and policies.
It also prevents malicious attackers from obtaining, vandalize, crashing or even steal data from your network or computer. Firewalls have multiple layers of security and it may also help to block or hide the unused Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) ports from an attacker, as attackers will have difficult time to break into your network.
1.1 Firewall Management Tools
A Firewall Management tools provides more flexibility on managing the flow of traffic between your network and private network zones. It determines all the data/packets that enter and leave your network and has the ability to configure, enforce, deploy and even audit rules and policies on your firewall to be more secure.
A firewall policy consist of how firewalls handle network traffic for specific IP addresses or addresses range, protocols, applications and content type.
With the Firewall Management tools, you are able to prevent unauthorized access to and from private network. Organizations are usually the main users using the tools as the important data may access or steal by malicious attackers.
However it may not be fully blocked malicious attackers from entering but to decrease the risk of attack and also reduce the volume of traffic carried.
1.2 Description of Cisco Security Manager
Cisco Security Manager enables enterprises on security management and scale security operations efficiently and accurately. It also helps organizations configure, monitor, identify errors and troubleshoot with any Cisco security deployment easily.
Cisco Security Manager can manage network services such as firewall, intrusion prevention system (IPS), site-to-site virtual private network (VPN) and remote-access VPN services. There are few examples of network services such as Firewall Management, IPS Management, Site-to-Site VPN Management, Cisco AnyConnect Management and it also able to generate systems reports.
1.3 Description of Firewall Builder
Firewall Builder is a multiplatform object-oriented firewall configuration and management tool. It consists of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and also simplifies the firewall policies with different types of firewall platform, such as for IP tables, IP filter, PF, and Cisco PIX.
Firewall Builder can be automatically generate right targets for security policy and NAT (Network Address Translation) rules. It also enforces best practices in policy design and helps to deploy and activate generated policy on the firewall. In Firewall Builder when a policy is built, it can be easily compile and install into one or more firewall machines. It simplifies user’s job on deploying the same set of rules on some firewall machines such as an enterprise or organization.
2. Comparison of the Firewall Management tools
Cisco Security Manager VS Firewall Builder
Cisco Security Manager
Firewall Builder
Features
Object Model
Rules Validation
Automatic Configuration Generator
Integrated Installer
Advanced Feature Configuration Support
Strengths
It provides a drag and drop Graphical User Interface (GUI) application and its user-friendly.
Can deploy the same set of firewall policies into another supported firewall devices.
Does not allow you to type any commands and time saving for configuring the policy.
Weakness
May get complex on configuring the policies for less experienced users.
Does not support all kind of platforms.
Platforms
It supports different types of platform such as IP tables, IP filter, PF, and Cisco PIX.
Costs
Firewall Builder 4 (supports up to 5 Firewalls) for $152.82 SGD
Licenses purchase includes 1 year technical support, free software updates and discounts on future versions.
Risks
When time goes by even more complex command syntax may occurred and human errors increase by configuring the rules.
Future directions
It simplified users to deploy a set of firewall rules to another firewall machines even if more machines needed for the same settings and it will automatically adjust and complied with the rules.
3. Examples of the Firewall Management Tools
Two types of firewall Management tool’s Screenshot been taken as shown below.
3.1 Cisco Security Manager 4.1 Latest versions
Examples of the Firewall Access Rules
Defining Firewall Policies
3.2 Firewall Builder 4 Latest versions
Examples of a Firewall Builder Policy
Creating a new firewall rules
4. Conclusion
Cisco Security Manager and Firewall Builder provide flexibility on configuring and managing the network traffic with a graphical user interface (GUI) application. Both tools provides powerful inspection on analyze firewall rules and policies. It helps users to solve the problem on configuring complex firewall policies that need to be deployed.
Cisco Security Manager is an enterprise-class security management application that helps organizations simplify on configuring or analyzing their Cisco security deployment. Cisco Security Manager have even more security advanced features than Firewall Builder such as Event Management, Troubleshooting and generates systems report for Firewall, IPS and VPN. It supports a wide range of Cisco Firewall product devices as large organizations more usually used these days.
