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Starting the Understanding and Selecting an Enterprise Firewall Project

Mike Rothman August 25, 2010 No Comments

I joined Securosis back in January and took on coverage of network and endpoint security. My goal this year was to lay the foundation by doing fairly in-depth research projects on the key fundamental areas in each patch. I started with Endpoint Security Fundamentals (I’m doing some webcasts next month) and continued with the Network Security Operations Quant project (which I’m now working through) to focus on the processes to manage network security devices. But clearly selecting the anchor device in the perimeter – the firewall – demands a full and detailed analysis. So next week I’ll start a series on “Understanding and Selecting an Enterprise Firewall.” As always, we’ll use the Totally Transparent Research process, which means everything will be posted to the blog and only after taking a round of feedback will we package the content as a paper. In preparation for the series I’m (as always) looking for more data points on what’s changing on the perimeter, specifically for the enterprise firewall. Are you looking at updating/re-architecting your firewall implementation? Happy with the incumbent? Looking to add more capabilities, such as UTM-like functions? Do you give a crap about all this application visibility hype? How do you manage 15-200 devices? I only need 15-20 minutes and any help is much appreciated. If you have opinions send me email: mrothman (at) securosis (dot) com and we’ll schedule some time to talk. Share:

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Incite 8/25/2010: Let Freedom Ring

Mike Rothman August 25, 2010 1 Comment

It’s funny how different folks have totally different perceptions of the same things. Obviously the idea of freedom for someone living under an oppressive regime is different than my definition. My good fortune to be born in a certain place to a certain family is not lost on me. But my wacky idea of freedom took on an interesting meaning this past weekend. The Boss was out of town with one of the kids. So I was responsible for the other two, and that meant on Saturday I started the day helping out our friends at their son’s birthday party. After much fun on the kickball field and making sure none of the little men drowned in the pool, I took the boy, XX1 (oldest girl), and two of his friends home for a few hours. When the interlopers were retrieved by their parents a couple hours later, I had to drop XX1 off at yet another birthday party. But this one involved a sleepover, so once I dropped her off I had one less thing to worry about. Back home with the boy, about an hour of catch (the kid has a pretty good gun), some hydration and a snack, and then time to send him off to his own sleepover. So by 6:30pm, I had shed my kids and felt freedom. So what to do? The Braves were out of town, I’m not a big Maroon 5 fan (they were in town), and no movies really interested me. So I decided to do something I very rarely do on a weekend: Be a slug. I got some Chinese food (veggie fried rice FTW) and settled down in front of the Giants NFL pre-season game and then a few stand-up comedy specials streamed via Netflix. About every 10 minutes I’d pause the TV for about 30 seconds and just enjoy. the. silence. No one asking me for a snack or to play a game or to watch TV or to just be annoying. No kids to pick up from this place or that. No to-do list to weigh over my head. No honey-do projects that had to be done. Just silence. And it was good. I know I should be kind of embarrassed that for me, freedom (at least in some sense) is about no one needing me to do anything. But it is. I’m happy 99% of the time to be doing what I like to do. But every so often it’s nice to just shut it down and not feel bad about it. Like everything else, that feeling passed. About 12 hours later, when I had to retrieve the kids and get back in the hamster wheel. But I did enjoy it, however fleeting it was. – Mike. Photo credits: “Freedom is a Toilet Tissue” originally uploaded by ruSSeLL hiGGs Recent Securosis Posts We Securosis folks are big fans of beer. Especially strong beer. You know, the kind you need to get in Canada. So we decided to import some help from up north in the form of new Contributing Analysts James Arlen and Dave Lewis. Yes, you know them. Yes, they are smart guys. And yes, we do have plans for world domination. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Backtalk Doublespeak on Encryption Webcasts on Endpoint Security Fundamentals Data Encryption for PCI 101: Encryption Options Data Encryption for PCI 101: Introduction Friday Summary: August 20, 2010 Another Take on McAfee/Intel McAfee: A (Secure) Chip on Intel’s Block Acquisition Doesn’t Mean Commoditization Various NSO Quant posts: Manage IDS/IPS – Process Change Request Manage IDS/IPS – Test and Approve Manage IDS/IPS – Deploy Manage IDS/IPS – Audit/Validate Manage IDS/IPS – Monitor Issues/Tune Manage IDS/IPS Process Revisited Incite 4 U It was only a matter of time. This week Rich finally realized that he gets no extra credit for writing more in an Incite. Though he’s right, when you point to a well-written piece, layering more commentary on top kind of defeats the purpose. Blocking and tackling on the network – Hey, you. It’s your conscience here. Dressed stealthily as an Incite to get you to remember the fundamentals. You know, little things like a properly segmented network can really improve your security. John Sawyer consults some of our pals (like JJ) to remind us that there are a bunch of devices (including embedded OSes and printers), which are vulnerable and really shouldn’t be on the same segments as our sensitive stuff. I’m sure the Great Intel will solve everything by embedding ePO within every chip out there someday. But in the meantime perhaps revisiting your network architecture, while not as fun as deploying another set of flashing lights from soon-to-be-extinct companies will have a bigger impact on your security posture. – MR How do you say B.S. in Spanish? – The big news this week is how a malware infected computer lead to the crash of Spanair flight 5022 (or the English version). If true, this would mean that malware caused deaths and serious destruction of property. And sure, the loss of airliner control conjures up Daemon-like images of destruction. The problem is the article has no details other than malware being found. Somewhere. We’ll make the bold assumption it wasn’t in the baggage turnstile software, but beyond that we don’t know. Most likely it was in one of the ground maintenance systems, where it may have masked some maintenance issue(s). That may or may not have contributed to the crash, but it’s a great story. What really happened and the extent of the malware’s impact is in question. Occam’s Razor would indicate some maintenance worker installed an infected version of Tetris on a Windows 95 PC to stave off boredom. Seriously, until there are some hard facts on this, I have to call tonterias on this steaming pile of insinuation. – AL When in doubt, blame M&A – Given the backdrop of the security acquisitions last week (INTC/MFE and HP/Fortify) we once again get to suffer from

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