Network Security Tip of the Week [14]

This week’s network security tip focuses on the network security devices that filter and enable traffic. Yup, we’re talking about firewalls. The challenge with managing firewall policies is that over time new rules get added, older, lesser-used or unused rules may note be removed… leading to a bloated firewall ruleset that makes it a lot harder when it comes time to troubleshoot issues and impacts the performance of the firewall. Ramani, an IT Manager from India offers the following suggestion…

“Most firewalls have an option to show the traffic counters against each rule. These are very beneficial both for firewall management and troubleshooting. Have a detailed look into the counters and reorder rules, placing the most used rules (the ones with the most hits) at the top. For large rule sets, this will significantly reduce the processing load on the firewall.”

Thanks Ramani for providing the tip! And thanks to our readers for continuing to provide useful network security tips! Keep ’em coming!