That's similar to saying Ted can carry 10 apples while bill can carry
only 8. The number of firewalls ANY PERSON can maintain has to do with
their personal method of managing their time and experience with the
application. Each configuration and situation is different also.
Example: I write a script for general network protection for Linux
workstations using the iptables/netfilter suite, it's a script that
basically sets up the firewall rules and enables it at boot from a
vanilla default linux install. I can write another script that will ssh
into each of the workstations, ftp the script i wrote onto itself,
execute it, then exit and move on. Kinda like a worm with good intentions.
In that example I can manage a whole /24 network of machines by writing
a script and hitting Enter. Other people may have different means for
getting it done, my method requires writing a script and then staring
out the office window while it works away. As for industry figures you
won't find any that will be helpful to you as they are probably biased
towards the scalability of product X. One other large factor is Cluster
Monitoring. If a person knows instantly the health of the network he/she
can manage many more than the 150 you mentioned. Also, shorter steps to
configuring the firewall plays a huge role. If you have to authenticate,
point, click, type, click, reassure, exit on every system and every
system is needing to change because of scaling then you have a weeks
worth of work to be done that can almost be guaranteed to not happen
correctly on the first shot (this can also lead to heavy drinking).
Sorry to not answer your question how you hoped but maybe you get why
this question really doesn't have a static answer. Any industry figure
is going to be biased by the industry itself.
-Terry
dominic.walton@colt.net wrote:
I am looking at a strategy review for the take on of a number of firewalls and
am looking for industry recognised figures for the number of firewalls one
engineer can manage. I was previously told 1 analyst can monitor 90 FW's while
an administrator can manage 150. This seems to me to be a very arbirary figure
as this is depending on the amount of change activity performed on each
firewall/monitoring technology/type of platform etc. Does any one know of
industry figures along with the criteria associated with each figure?
Thanks
Dom.
